Nobody likes needles. Indeed, it is theorised that a significant portion of those refusing to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 are doing so simply because they do not want to be jabbed. Now a team is revealing that they have found a way to get these people vaccinated with a pill.
The reason why vaccines have always needed to be administered via needles is because they contain fragile nucleic acids that would be quickly destroyed by stomach juices and absolutely must be delivered directly into cells to realise their therapeutic benefits. Aware of these challenges, a team with a history of developing technology that facilitates long term drug delivery in the intestines speculated that they might be able to develop a method for getting mRNA formulations like those used in Covid-19 vaccines into devices that could then painlessly inject them into the lining of the stomach.
The device that the researchers have created, which is the size of a large oral capsule, looks a bit like the shell of a tortoise once its gelatine coat dissolves in the stomach. The device carries a needle but the needle only pops out when the tortoise shell shape has its flat section flush with the lining of the stomach. Yet, this trick alone was not enough to safely deliver the mRNA payload. To get the vital material all the way into cells the team created a range of branched polymers that were then used to encapsulate the mRNA. A few of these esters worked really well when tested on rodents and pigs with both groups of animals showing successful systemic uptake of the mRNA that was delivered. While not yet being used in people, the findings suggest that oral vaccines are a real possibility in the future. You can read more in The Economist article that I wrote on this here.