Strawberry pigment could allow patients to swap jabs for tablets

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-08-11 10:56

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A red pigment derived from strawberries could enable medications such as insulin to be delivered orally rather than by injection, according to a recent study conducted on mice. Many drugs have to be injected because they are made up of molecules too big to get through the walls of the gastrointestinal tract and into the bloodstream, but needle phobia is known to cause patients to intentionally skip their medication. Results from the study showed that the strawberry pigment can reversibly make it easier for orally ingested insulin to pass through intestine linings in mice, lowering their blood sugar without causing inflammation, weight loss, or tissue damage - which are common concerns with existing, synthetic compounds used for this purpose.

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From: PNAS

Intestinal permeability enhancer from strawberries

Researchers report that the red pigment pelargonidin, derived from strawberries, acts as an intestinal permeability enhancer, potentially enabling medications such as insulin to be delivered orally rather than by injection; mouse experiments revealed that the biological activity of oral insulin-pelargonidin formulations was comparable with that of injected insulin and that daily dosing of the enhancer for 1 month resulted in no detectable side effects, according to the authors.

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Research PNAS, Web page

Journal/
conference: Biophysics and Computational Biology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Carnegie Mellon University, US;

Funder: This work was supported by NIH grant DP2-HD098860, NSF grant 1807983, the Wadhwani Foundation, and the BerkmanFaculty Development Fund. N.G.L. acknowledges funding support from the Thomas and Adrienne Klopack Graduate Fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). This material is based on work supported by the NSF GRFP under grant DGE1252522. K.A.W. and N.G.L. areinventors on Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applicationPCT/US2019/027885 and US patent application US 2021/0113519 A1, which cover aspects of the technology presented here.

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