A team is developing an oral insulin tablet to replace daily injections

The table dissolves in your upper cheek.

Many people living with diabetes know the importance of their daily insulin injections. The vast majority of people who have diabetes suffer from Type 2 diabetes. This is the type which is developed throughout life and not present at birth. Not everyone with this type of diabetes needs insulin to regulate their blood sugar but many eventually will.

Type 1 diabetes is different. The majority of those living with Type 1 diabetes manage their condition with insulin injections. These may need to be administered up to three or four times a day. This is done to ensure there’s an appropriate level of sugar in the blood. People with Type 1 Diabetes can’t take the current insulin pills. This is because their stomach acid destroys the pill before it can reach their bloodstream. This renders this type of treatment ineffective. A new development may be changing this, however.

A newly developed pill is dissolved inside your cheek

Researchers from the University of British Columbia in Canada have developed a new insulin pill that has been readily absorbed in studies in rats. In fact, they say it’s absorbed as well as injected insulin. The pill isn’t one you swallow. It sits nestled between your cheek and your gum line and is absorbed through the thin membrane of your skin. While much of the insulin that’s usually taken in pills or drinks accumulates ineffectively in your stomach, this one has proved to be different.

“These exciting results show that we are on the right track in developing an insulin formulation that will no longer need to be injected before every meal, improving the quality of life, as well as mental health, of more than nine million Type 1 diabetics around the world,” said professor Dr. Anubhav Pratap-Singh (he/him). Pratap-Singh was the principal investigator in this study.

“Even after two hours of delivery, we did not find any insulin in the stomachs of the rats we tested. It was all in the liver and this is the ideal target for insulin — it’s really what we wanted to see,” said Yigong Guo (he/him), the study’s first author.

While research has yet to be done on humans with this pill, the current results look promising. Being able to navigate the rigors of diabetes without the need for daily injections could be a game-changer for many and increase the freedom in their daily lives while also reducing the waste generated by injections.