Protein medicines could last five times longer — and one day arrive without a needle

Many life-changing medicines are proteins, and proteins have a problem: the body clears them quickly, so patients face injection after injection, sometimes for life. A team led by Professor Jan Terje Andersen at the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital took a different route — instead of changing the medicine, they re-engineered its carrier. Fusing the hormone EPO, used to treat anaemia, to a redesigned version of albumin, the blood protein the body naturally recycles for weeks, they made a version that lasted 5.7 days in circulation instead of 1.1, stayed detectable for 27 days, and still stimulated red blood cell production just as well. Given through the nose in humanised mice, five times more of it crossed into the blood than a normal-albumin version. The work, published in Nature Communications, points toward protein medicines given far less often — and perhaps, for some, with no needle at all.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation