The device fires a jet of the drug which breaches the skin. Image courtesy of the MIT BioInstrumentation Lab |
Researchers at MIT have developed a device which can deliver drugs inside the skin in the form of a high-pressured jet WITHOUT the use of a hypodermic needle.
Moreover, the device can inject the drug in a range of doses and upto various depths.
Several jet-injection systems are available, but their drawback is that the amount of dosage and depth cannot be varied.
Other non-needle mechanisms like nicotine patches can only release molecules whose size is less than the skin's pores.
“Commercially available jet injectors … provide limited control, which limits their applications to certain drugs or patient populations,” Mitragotri (a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara) says. “[This] design provides excellent control over jet parameters, including speed and doses … this will enhance the applicability of needleless drug devices.”
MECHANISM:
The design is built around a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that’s attached to a piston inside a drug ampoule.
When current is applied, it interacts with the magnetic field to produce a force that pushes the piston forward, ejecting the drug at very high pressure and velocity (almost the speed of sound in air) out through the ampoule’s nozzle — an opening as wide as a mosquito’s proboscis.
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