According to the CDC, around six million people use insulin to help control their blood sugar in the fight against diabetes. This tedious task of injecting yourself multiple times a day is less than pleasant. Therefore, many research groups globally are looking at better ways to manage this disease.
We’ve already told you about a pill that monitors patient glucose levels, automated insulin systems, and FGF hormone therapy. So this time we bring you a discrete, non-invasive, convenient glucose patch that sticks to the inside of your cheek. Due to the cheek’s super thin 500µM thickness, it allows for a drug delivery system that skin elsewhere on the body at 2mm does not.
A team from Université de Lille came up with the brilliant idea of using the cheek patch. Firstly safety and effectiveness testing was carried out on pigs, and human volunteers participated in placebo comfortability trials for 120 minutes. Both were extremely successful, with the insulin releasing system being able to curb spikes in blood sugar in pigs, and the humans reporting no interference with speech, saliva production, and swallowing.
“Compared with multiple insulin injections, this mode of delivery offers a huge advantage by increasing the compliance of patients to treatment, as it is resilient and can be easily self-administrated,” stated the authors of the study, published in ACS Applied Bio Materials.
The next step is for the team to carry out further trials in animal models to perfect their prototype.
Source study: ACS Applied Bio Materials – Photothermal Activatable Mucoadhesive Fiber Mats for On-Demand Delivery of Insulin via Buccal and Corneal Mucosa
