Oral administration provides a simple and non-invasive approach for drug delivery. However, due to poor absorption and rapid enzymatic degradation in the gastrointestinal tract, a wide range of molecules must be administered by injection to achieve the required doses and pharmacokinetics.

Here, we present an orally administered liquid auto-injector capable of delivering up to 4 mg of a bioavailable drug with the rapid pharmacokinetics of an injection, achieving absolute bioavailability of up to 80% and reaching maximum plasma drug concentrations within 30 minutes after dosing.

This approach improves dosing efficiency and pharmacokinetics by an order of magnitude over our previously designed injector capsules and by up to two orders of magnitude over clinically available and preclinical chemical permeation enhancement technologies.

We administered the capsules to swine to deliver clinically relevant doses of four commonly injected medications, including adalimumab, a GLP-1 analogue, recombinant human insulin, and epinephrine. These multi-day dosing experiments, along with oral administration in awake animal models, support the translational potential of the system.