One reason that it’s so difficult to deliver large protein drugs orally is that these drugs can’t pass through the mucus barrier that lines the digestive tract. This means that insulin and most other biologic drugs that comprise proteins or nucleic acids have to be injected, or administered at a hospital. Researchers at MIT and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have now developed a robotic drug capsule, RoboCap, that may one day be able to replace those injections.
