A team of Georgia Tech researchers is paving the way for injectable drugs to be delivered via pill

Currently, the way medicines like insulin and GLP-1s (Wegovy, Ozempic) enter the bloodstream is through subcutaneous injections. Users have to inject themselves, sometimes daily. However, new research from Georgia Tech might be changing the way these types of drugs are administered, allowing users to simply take a pill instead.

Mark Prausnitz, PhD, Regents Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech, runs a laboratory at the school that develops new technologies to get drugs where they need to go in the body. A recent PhD candidate, Joshua Palacios, came with a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, which gave flexibility to go in a new direction, says Prausnitz. “It got us thinking, our creative juices flowing,” he says.

The researchers used insulin as a model because it’s a highly sought-after and expensive drug with lots of well-established analysis methods, but the application could potentially be much wider. “Our expectation is that this kind of pill is generally useful, and that a whole variety of different drugs, including GLP-1s, could be delivered using it,” says Prausnitz.

The pill works by undergoing a chemical reaction. After you swallow it, the reaction makes bubbles inside the pill and builds up pressure, resulting in the medication bursting through the shell and into the bloodstream.

Delivering certain medications by pill instead of via injection could be life-changing in myriad ways, from being less expensive to a more pleasant experience. Diabetics could benefit greatly, for example. “It’s a barrier to accessing medicines that you have to inject yourself, or go to a clinic and have someone inject you,” he says. While diabetics get the necessary training, it can be burdensome. “If you can swallow a pill—and most people can swallow a pill—it’s much easier, and it makes access so much more straightforward.”

While the pill is a ways off from being marketed, it’s exciting progress nonetheless. “We’ve shown the method works,” he says. Next, the team will conduct further research and optimization, and then move on to human studies. “My hope is that in a few years we are at the stage where we can do a first-in-humans study, but that will depend on funding,” he says.

This is not the first time Prausnitz’s work has tried to improve drug delivery. He is considered a pioneer of microneedles—extremely small needles about the thickness of a human hair—for drug delivery and worked to get a measles and rubella vaccine micronedle patch clinical trial published last year, and is currently working on microneedles for long-acting contraception. He conducted the first clinical trial at Emory University for microneedle patch flu vaccinations. The idea was that if a patch with undetectable microneedles is used, one that could even potentially be self-administered, more people might be open to receiving a flu vaccine. “Less than half of Americans get their flu shot every year,” he says. “It’s inconvenient and unpleasant, but this could potentially make it easier for more people to get the vaccine.”

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