Given the choice between tossing back a dose of medicine and pushing it through your flesh inside a cold, steel needle, most people pick the pill. Convenience, portability, and lack of skin-stabbiness have made pills the most popular way to administer drugs for the better part of medical history. But not all drugs can survive the corrosive, churning trip from the stomach into the intestines and across to the bloodstream. Antibodies, proteins—these molecules are too fragile.

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