Scientists develop pill with reaction engine

Scientists from the University of California San Diego (UC SD) talked about the possibility of using miniature reaction engines for accurate delivery of medicine to relevant organs.

A study published on the Nano Letters website raises one of the main challenges in modern medicine - namely, the low efficiency of drug delivery to impaired organs. A large percentage of drugs ingested by patients have no impact on their bodies, because they end up dissolving in their stomach acid. This forces patients to take even higher doses of medicine, running the risk of complications, with injections as the only other viable alternative.

Scientists propose a new class of pills that accurately deliver to the targeted area as a solution to this problem. This is enabled by titanium dioxide and magnesium: entering into a reaction with water, this substance creates a jet that brings the pill into action. The development has already been tested on rats, with researchers successfully delivering a pill to the rodent’s intestines without dissolving it in their stomach acid.