Here are five points:
1. The tablet is engineered so that one side adheres to tissue, while the other repels food and liquids that would otherwise pull it away from the attachment site.
2. Researchers say such extended-release pills could be used to reduce the dosage frequency of some drugs. For example, antibiotics that normally have to be taken two or three times a day could be given just once.
3. A description of the device was published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials. Young-Ah Lucy Lee, a technical assistant at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research in Cambridge, was the paper’s lead author. Giovanni Traverso, MB, PhD, a research affiliate at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Robert Langer, PhD, the David H. Koch Institute Professor and a member of the Koch Institute, were the paper’s senior authors.
4. The pill is duel-sides, which means one side sticks to mucosal surfaces, while the other is omniphobic, so it repels everything it encounters.
5. The researchers now plan to do further tests in animals to help them tune how long the tablets can stay attached, the rate at which drugs are released from the material and the ability to target the material to specific sections of the GI tract.
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