An Insulin Pill That Delivers: Microinjections in the Gut
Alex Abramson
Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
Injectable biologic drugs have transformed the treatment of patients suffering from a range of diseases, including diabetes and Crohn’s Disease. Patients, however, prefer therapies which can be delivered orally, and these drugs are not readily absorbed into the bloodstream through the gastrointestinal tract. In this talk, I will describe orally dosed capsules validated in large animal models which enable the delivery of biologic drugs by predictably localizing to the gut wall and delivering drug loaded posts into the tissue to allow for systemic uptake. Additionally, I will describe how mathematically modeling the self-righting act of a leopard tortoise had profound impacts on the ideation of these capsules. Using adalimumab, insulin, and GLP-1 receptor agonists as model drugs, I will show that the devices safely and rapidly deliver efficacious drug plasma levels with an order of magnitude greater efficiency compared to other pre-clinical and clinical technologies. Gastrointestinal injection pills may soon provide a discreet, cost-effective, and pain free method of drug delivery for a variety of biomacromolecules including peptides, monoclonal antibodies, and nucleic acids.
Dr. Alex Abramson is an NIH F32 Postdoctoral fellow in Chemical Engineering at Stanford University working with Profs. Zhenan Bao and the late Sanjiv Sam Gambhir. He received his B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT under the direction of Profs. Robert Langer and Giovanni Traverso. His research, which focuses on oral biologic drug delivery and bioelectronic therapeutics, has been featured in news outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, and Wired. Additionally, Novo Nordisk has exclusively licensed a portfolio of his patents to bring into clinical trials. Dr. Abramson is also involved in the public health sector and has performed research on quantifying the quality-of-life impact that novel biomedical technologies have on patients worldwide. In his spare time, Dr. Abramson volunteers as a STEM tutor at a local middle school, mentors start-up ventures in the biotechnology space, plays golf, and hikes. For more information about Dr. Abramson, please visit his website: www.agabramson.com.