Indian scientists have developed an injectable Silk fibroin-based hydrogel for sustained insulin delivery in diabetic patients. A patent application has been filed for the invention.
Prof T Govindaraju and his research team from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), an autonomous research institute under the Department of Science and Technology, developed the silk fibroin (SF) formulation using biocompatible additives and prepared the injectable SF hydrogel (iSFH) that can ease insulin delivery in diabetic patients.
The iSFH has demonstrated successful delivery of active insulin in rats, and the results have been published in the journal ACS Applied Bio Materials.
They have shown that subcutaneous injection of insulin with-iSFH in diabetic rats formed active depot under the skin from which insulin leached out slowly and restored the physiological glucose homeostasis for a prolonged period of four days with no risks of low blood sugar through sudden burst of high concentration of insulin into the blood.
The viscous additives used by the team restricted the mobility of SF protein backbones and results in the rapid gelation.
The microstructures provide mechanical strength (to support injectability), and porous morphology of iSFH allowed the encapsulation of human recombinant insulin in its active form in diabetic rats.