More than 37 million people in the U.S. have diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, 8.4 million Americans needed to take insulin in 2022 to lower their blood sugar. Insulin, however, is tricky to deliver into the body orally because it is a protein easily destroyed in the stomach.
While researchers are developing pills that resist digestion in the stomach and skin patches that monitor blood sugar and automatically release insulin, the most reliable way currently to take insulin is through frequent injections.
I am a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Indiana University School of Medicine, where my colleagues and I study drug delivery systems. Researching innovative new ways to get medications into the body can improve how well patients respond to and comply with treatments. An easier way to take insulin would be music to the ears of many people with diabetes, especially those who aren’t fans of needles.
In a recent study in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, researchers engineered cells to release insulin in response to specific sound waves: the music of the band Queen. Though it still has a long way to go, this new system may one day replace the insulin injection with a dose of rock ’n’ roll.
What is diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic disease that arises when the body fails to make enough insulin or respond to insulin. Insulin is a hormone the pancreas makes in response to the rise in sugar concentration in the blood when the body digests food. This crucial hormone gets those sugars out of the blood and into muscles and tissues where it is used or stored for energy.
Without insulin, blood sugar levels remain high and cause symptoms that include frequent urination, thirst, blurry vision and fatigue. Left untreated, this hyperglycemia can be life-threatening, causing organ damage and a diabetic coma. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diabetes is the No. 1 cause of kidney failure, lower-limb amputations and adult blindness, making it the eighth most common cause of death in the U.S.
Diabetes results when the body either doesn’t produce enough insulin or is no longer responsive to it.
Treating diabetes is straightforward: When the body is lacking insulin, give it more insulin. Scientists have mastered how to make the hormone, but direct injection is the only effective way to get it into the body. Diabetic patients usually have to carry insulin vials and needles wherever they go. Considering that many people fear needles, this may not be an ideal way to manage the disease.
This challenge has sparked researchers to look into new ways to deliver insulin more easily.
What is cellular engineering?
Cells are the basic unit of life. Your body is composed of hundreds of different types of cells that carry out specialized functions. In some diabetic patients, the pancreatic beta cells that make insulin…
