Insulin in a pill?
The quest to develop oral insulin for patients with Type 1 diabetes has been an arduous one, because the hormone can be destroyed by stomach acid and it’s not easily absorbed from the intestine. Engineers at Harvard believe they’ve come up with a potential solution to that problem: an insulin formulation with a special polymer coating. First they figured out how to put insulin into a formula containing choline and geranic acid. Then they encapsulated it in an acid-resistant coating that doesn’t start to dissolve until it reaches the intestine. They are planning animal tests of the pill, which they described in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Release)
Discovery of 6 pancreatic cancer mutations sparks call for more gene testing
Reversing damage from brain injuries
A brain molecule called N-acetylaspartate (NAA) is known to decline in people with brain diseases or injuries. But the function of NAA was never fully understood. Now scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that NAA prevents the protein amyloid-beta from folding or clumping together and forming plaques. Amyloid plaques have been found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and the misfolding of amyloid has been observed in brain injuries. The researchers believe that restoring NAA to normal levels could be an effective way of treating brain injuries and diseases like Alzheimer’s. (Release)