Unlike this snake with robotic legs, MIT’s RoboCap might actually save lives in the future. This robotic pill is capable of tunneling through mucus in the GI tract to administer large protein drugs like insulin, thus replacing traditional injections completely.
Put simply, this robotic pill has a cap that spins and tunnels through the mucus barrier when it reaches the small intestine, enabling drugs carried by the capsule to pass into cells lining the intestine. RoboCap could also be uased to deliver vancomycin, an antibiotic peptide that currently has to be injected. The spinning cap helps erode the compartment carrying the drug, which is gradually released into the digestive tract.
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By displacing the mucus, we can maximize the dispersion of the drug within a local area and enhance the absorption of both small molecules and macromolecules. I thought that if we could tunnel through the mucus, then we could deposit the drug directly on the epithelium. The idea is that you would ingest this capsule and the outer layer would dissolve in the digestive tract, exposing all these features that start to churn through the mucus and clear it,” said Giovanni Traverso, the Karl van Tassel Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.
