MIT team explores potential RNA vaccine pills

RNA vaccines have to be injected, which can be an obstacle for people who fear needles. The team hopes its new method could help people become more receptive to RNA vaccines by making them easier to tolerate.

The approach could also be used to deliver other kinds of therapeutic RNA or DNA directly to the digestive tract, which could allow for easier treatment of gastrointestinal disorders such as ulcers.

“Nucleic acids, in particular RNA, can be extremely sensitive to degradation particularly in the digestive tract,” said Giovanni Traverso, the Karl van Tassel Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

In a study published in the journal Matter, Traverso and his colleagues described how they showed ability to use the capsule to deliver up to 150 micrograms of RNA — more than the amount used in mRNA Covid vaccines, which have 30 to 100 micrograms — in the stomach of pigs.