Hate Needles? No Problem
New pulse-patch system could make vaccines cheap, fast, and easy
For all the advances of modern medicine, today’s drug and vaccine delivery methods still have their drawbacks: hypodermic needles, medicated patches, and ultrasonic methods may offer a range of options, but all lack speed and precision.
Plus, there’s another fact of life: needles can hurt.
Since the dawn of modern medicine — well, maybe since the days of Star Trek — doctors and patients have wished for an easy, injection-free option, a device that goes on your arm, and zap, you’re done.
Now a team of Boston University researchers is developing just that: an electrostatic nano-pulse method for rapidly delivering vaccines and drugs through the skin. Funded in its pilot stage by BU’s Center for Integration of Medicine & Innovative Technology, the team aims to develop a clinical device with widespread applications, including low-cost inoculation in developing countries and rapid antidote dispersal in the event of an epidemic.
Conceived by principal investigators Mark Horenstein (left), a College of Engineering professor of electrical and computer engineering, and David Sherr, a School of Public Health professor of environmental health, the idea is to put a drug or vaccine inside a biodegradable nanoparticle as small as a human pore. Then, an electrostatic voltage pulse drives it through the skin, where dendritic cells transport it to lymph nodes and generate the immune system’s response.
Sherr has developed plans to evaluate the nano-pulse method in laboratory mice by tracking fluorescent nanoparticles and adjusting the pulse strength. “If we can get the nanoparticles at about one-fifth the depth of a typical human hair and into a layer of skin called stratum corneum,” he says, “that layer has a direct line to the lymph node system.” The team will soon embark on a six-month pilot study to test the concept.
A key challenge is the electric current needed for delivery. Horenstein is trying to design a device that will drive nanoparticles (seen through a scanning electron microscope, left; fluorescent dye, shown under UV light, helps track the nanoparticles’ movement, right) into the skin with fewer than 50 volts of electricity, the maximum level thought safe for humans. “Usually when you’re trying to drive particles with this level of force, you need thousands of volts,” Horenstein says. “So it all comes down to designing the right methods and structures.”
Photo by Kalman Zabarsky. Diagrams of nano-pulse patch and images of nanoparticles courtesy of Mark Horenstein and David Sherr.
This article originally appeared in the 2008 issue of Research at Boston University.
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