Protein-based medicines have transformed the treatment of many diseases, but they often come with a limitation: they must be injected, sometimes repeatedly, because they are rapidly cleared from the bloodstream. For patients who depend on long-term or lifelong treatment, frequent injections place a considerable burden on everyday life.

Now, researchers from the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital, together with international collaborators, have developed an approach to make a therapeutic protein last longer in the body while also opening the possibility of delivering it across mucosal surfaces without the use of needles. The work is published in Nature Communications.