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Skin Patch May Replace Traditional Injections Tuesday, November 27, 2007 - Einat Rotman Home >> News >> Medicine   
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HP and Crospon have developed a skin patch which uses microneedles that barely penetrate the skin. The microneedles can replace conventional injections and deliver drugs through the skin without causing any pain. The skin patch technology also enables delivery of several drugs by one patch and the control of dosage and of administration time for each drug. It has the potential to be safer and more efficient than injections.
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HP and Crospon, a medical device developer, have recently entered a licensing agreement for their drug delivery platform, which enables painless, controlled release of one or more drugs in a single patch applied to the skin. The drug delivery skin patch may be available to consumers by year 2010. The epidermis, which is the outer skin layer, prevents invasion of bacteria and viruses into the body. Conventional needles penetrate far beyond the epidermis, which is a fraction of a millimeter thick, into the nerve-packed dermis layer, causing us pain. Because the maximum penetration of the skin patch's microneedles is 0.5mm, they do not stimulate the pain receptors that are located about 0.75mm under the skin's surface.
Intradermal delivery of medications, just below the surface of the skin, radically reduces discomfort compared to traditional hypodermic needles. The microneedles allow medication to quickly enter the bloodstream, resulting in the potential delivery of lower and more precise dosages and enabling precise control of dosage timing. The microneedle skin patch can deliver drugs which are currently injected or taken daily. Until now, only chemicals which can be absorbed directly through the skin, like nicotine, tranquilizers and progesteron, could be delivered using a patch, whereas most drugs have bigger molecules and therefore required a needle to break the skin barrier. Since the HP-developed skin patch uses microneedles that penetrate the skin only slightly, it enables using the technique with a much wider variety of drugs and biopharmaceuticals. For instance, the patch could be used by diabetes patients for the delivery of both insulin and glucagon (which lowers the risk of insulin overdose), and may replace inhalers used by asthma patients.
TFOT recently covered the development of a couple of other devices for needle-free drug administration. The University of California Santa Barbara's Pulsed Microjet System delivers protein drugs into the skin without pain or bruising, and the Queen's University Belfast jet injection is designated to be used in PDT treatment of skin cancer. More information on the new skin patch technology can be found on the HP website. |
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Perhaps a version without a microchip could work for cheaper drugs - ie. delivers the medication immediately? |
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Maybe they can develop these for use in making easy-to-apply permanent/semipermanent tattoos. o_o |
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I am not sure the patch is such a good idea. Spies and assassins could use it to kill easily and effectively. How about filling it with bio-agents instead of drugs. |
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How is this making it easier for criminals to kill people, as you think it will? Spies and assassins? So they\'d have to be close range rather than shoot someone from a distance? This doesn\'t make it easier to kill someone, it makes it a new technique but requires them to be in close range. Unless you see them tossing microchips at people. One concern I have is the depth of the microneedles. How can they be sure it\'s not too deep? Not everyone\'s skin is the same thickness? |
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I've been a diabetic for 24 years of my 26 on this earth. Averaging 4 injections per day, you do the math. I think this is awesome if used in conjunction with a insulin pump and infusion set. |
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It would be interesting to see if the drugs can be delivered using capilary action rather than requiring electronics that way reducing the cost and making it possible for disposable mass production of immediate application drugs |
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Of course many (most) of the benefitsd could be gained by making the needles of a biodegradable material which could mix with the actual drugs or antibiotics, controlling dosage by just using more needles. Similar to disolving surgical stiches. Low complexity, low cost, and unfortunately low profit. |
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SPIES AND NINJAS? That all you have to say about this? OH MY GOD. TARD. |
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If this chip ends up like the TV I bought you can expect it to be made one or two years then unceremoniously dumped, have it break down after 18 months and charge you $2000+ to fix it. Yeah I'm gonna buy HP! |
