A team at Kumamoto University has developed a tiny new peptide that, in laboratory tests on mice, helps insulin pass through the gut. Combining this peptide with a specially stabilised form of insulin reduced blood sugar levels after oral administration in tests, according to multiple reports. In trials, this combination endured the gut long enough and permeated through the intestinal wall to perform its function.
The digestive system typically destroys insulin before it can prove beneficial, and our guts don't readily allow large proteins to enter the bloodstream. The Kumamoto group's solution uses a zinc-stabilised 'hexamer' - six insulin molecules clustered together - packaged with a new cyclic peptide. Shingo Ito, an associate professor, said in an official statement that insulin injections remain a daily burden for many patients, and their peptide-based platform offers a new route to deliver insulin orally and may be applicable to long-acting insulin formulations and other injectable biologics.
Any new medicine must first demonstrate its safety, consistency, and effectiveness in human trials, and further investigation is required to identify stable pill formulations of the peptide–insulin combo that work consistently. The specific safety and efficacy results from the laboratory tests on mice have not been detailed, and it is unknown whether the peptide-insulin combination has been tested in human trials yet. Approximately 421,000 individuals in the UK were utilising insulin in 2010, a figure that had tripled between 1991 and 2010 due to increasing type 2 diabetes diagnoses, based on the most recent data released in 2010.
With over five million individuals now living with diabetes in the UK, with about 10% of those having type 1, and one in four of those with type 2 requiring it, that number has likely risen, according to multiple reports.