Researchers at MIT and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed a pill coated with tiny needles that can deliver drugs directly into the lining of the digestive tract. This pill was designed to overcome of the obstacle that many drugs have which is that they are made of large proteins and cannot be given as a pill because they get broken down in the stomach before being absorbed. The team has already conducted animal studies. In the studies the team found that the capsule delivered insulin more efficiently than an injection under the skin. After the injection, there were no harmful side effects as the capsule passed through the digestive system. "This could be a way that the patient can circumvent the need to have an infusion or subcutaneous administration of a drug," says Giovanni Traverso, a research fellow at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, a gastroenterologist at MGH, and one of the lead authors of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The tests were done with insulin but the researchers feel this method of drug deliver would be useful for biopharmaceuticals such as antibodies which are treatments for cancer, arthritis and Crohn's disease.