I'm always a sucker for a cephalopod-linked story, so naturally I clicked on this one. Researchers have taken inspiration from the arms of the octopus to create a novel way to deliver drugs. The small suction cups are loaded with a drug and attached to the inside surface of the cheek; the drug is then absorbed through the buccal surface. It seems that even relatively short exposure provides similar or better bioavailability than oral dosages. Participants in a trial also much preferred the sucker cups to injectable dosages.
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"Octo-patch"? "Cephalo-pill"?
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Jean-Christophe Leroux, a pharmacist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and his colleagues took inspiration from the suction cups that octopuses use to grip objects and prey underwater.
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