Diabetes: Insulin Patch Inside a Person's Cheek

Health -- For those with diabetes, controlling blood sugar levels necessitates round-the-clock vigilance.
A healthier diet and more physical activity can help, but many people with diabetes need to take insulin shots on a daily.

Insulin is the major hormone that regulates blood sugar. Researchers in the journal ACS Applied Bio Materials have developed a prototype insulin-loaded patch that pleasantly clings to the inside of a person's cheek to deliver the drug in a less invasive manner.

According to the American Diabetes Association, some 6 million Americans take insulin to help control their diabetes, either because their bodies don't make it (Type 1) or because what they do make doesn't work well for them (Type 2). (Type 2). People with diabetes either inject themselves with pens or syringes or have semi-permanent insulin pumps implanted. These procedures are invasive and unpleasant, and they necessitate sterile settings and proper needle or biohazard disposal. Other methods of delivering insulin through the skin, including as gel-like lotions, have been investigated. However, the skin acts as an excellent barrier, allowing medications to enter the body slowly. The membrane lining the interior of the mouth, on the other hand, is very thin, roughly one quarter the thickness of skin, making it a potential entry point for medicines. Sabine Szunerits and colleagues wanted to explore if a material they'd produced before — a polymer fiber mat that releases pharmaceuticals when heated — could connect to the cheek lining and administer insulin.

For three hours, the researchers submerged tiny squares of a nanofiber mat constructed from electrospun poly(acrylic acid), -cyclodextrin, and reduced graphene oxide fibers in an insulin solution. The insulin-loaded patches were then placed to pig cheek linings and corneas. The material was activated and released insulin into the two types of membranes several times faster than through skin after being heated with a near-infrared laser for 10 minutes to 122F. In addition, the patches were implanted in the cheeks of three insulin-dependent pigs in vivo. The heat from the laser caused no irritation or visible alterations in the cheek linings. The pigs' blood sugar levels dropped as soon as the substance was activated. The animals' plasma insulin levels increased at the same time, indicating that this preliminary platform is effective at getting insulin into the bloodstream, according to the researchers. Finally, six human volunteers wore a placebo version of the patch inside their cheeks for two hours and said that it was comfortable. The next step, according to the researchers, is to do more preclinical testing of the prototype on animal models.

Journal Reference:

Anna Voronova, Cristina Prieto, Maria Pardo-Figuerez, Jose Maria Lagaron, Amitav Sanyal, Bilal Demir, Thomas Hubert, Valerie Plaisance, Valerie Pawlowski, Séverine Vignoud-Despond, Alexandre Barras, Amar Abderrahmani, Rabah Boukherroub, Sabine Szunerits. Photothermal Activatable Mucoadhesive Fiber Mats for On-Demand Delivery of Insulin via Buccal and Corneal Mucosa. ACS Applied Bio Materials, 2022; DOI: 10.1021/acsabm.1c01161

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American Chemical Society. "An insulin patch that sticks inside a person’s cheek." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 February 2022. .  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220203103035.htm
 

Wnctimes by Marjorie Farrington April 10, 2022