Diabetes, it’s revolution: Say goodbye to insulin syringes, “Suma” comes to the miraculous pill
Big as a blueberry or a pea, made in the USA, it is called Soma and is described in Science by its creators and developers Carlo Giovanni Traverso, Robert Langer and Alex Abramson as the greatest recent innovation in the fight against diabetes.
Goodbye holes on the skin, now a pill is enough
Goodbye holes in the skin. In the future the injection can be swallowed, thanks to pills capable of carrying micro-needles along the digestive tract to administer medicine directly into the stomach. How to take a tablet, however, receiving a painless puncture. In all probability, the first to benefit from the possible breakthrough will be diabetes patients, for whom a device designed to release insulin is already being tested.
The article on Sciences
Brain forces in well-known institutions such as the Brigham and Women’s Hospital of the Harvard Medical School, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Mit and the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research that heads it.
Researchers from the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk took part in the work. Soma is a capsule that contains a tiny needle loaded with 0.3 milligrams of human insulin. Inspired by the shell of the leopard tortoise – an African tortoise that thanks to a particular shape of the carapace manages to straighten itself when it flips on its back – the device is able to self-orientate itself.
Regardless of how it ‘will stick into the stomach (after having resisted extreme temperature and acidity conditions), it is able to direct itself to the wall of the organ and only there will he inject it. Positive tests on animals: the capsule, the researchers say, «has been able to release enough insulin to lower blood sugar to levels comparable to those obtained with traditional skin injections»
