No more needles: MIT develops high-powered liquid injection device
Baku, May 25 (AZERTAC). If you’re queasy about getting shots because you don’t like needles, MIT scientists have developed a new drug injection method just for you.
Instead of pricking the skin, a prototype handheld injector device instead delivers medicine as an extremely thin, exceptionally high-powered jet of liquid, which has enough force to breach skin, yet does so with such precision and speed that it doesn’t cause pain or discomfort, nor does it leave behind a noticeable hole, according to the MIT researchers who created it.
“Skin is flexible and because the hole we produce is so small the elasticity of the skin ‘closes up’ the hole,” said Ian Hunter, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering that led the research behind the prototype injector, in an email to TPM.
“Moreover, the skin repairs the hole in a day or so,” he added.
In a video demonstration of the new injection method and prototype device posted online Thursday, Hunter compared the sensation of getting the drugs injected via a jet to getting bitten by a mosquito — barely noticeable for most people.
To be fair, though, Hunter and his colleagues haven’t yet begun human trials of their new prototype device. So far they’ve just tested it on gel, animal tissues and several living animal subjects, including sheep.
“In sheep it appeared that the sheep was not even aware that it was being injected,” Hunter told TPM. “Human testing is a high priority and should start in the near future.”
The method developed by Hunter and his colleagues relies on a device called a Lorentz force actuator. This consists of a strong magnet and an electrode, in this case, copper wire coiled around the magnet, attached to a piston. When a current is sent through the wire, it interacts with the magnetic field, causing the piston to fire and expel the liquid at an incredible velocity.
“We find that its is a combination of both force (or pressure) and velocity of the jet which determines the effectiveness of the penetration and the depth of the delivery,” Hunter told TPM. “Our pressures are typically at least 50 times atmospheric pressure and our velocities are typically well over 1/10th the speed of sound (in air) and sometimes as high as the speed of sound.”
In fact, the prototype device works so well that it has even been able inject solids — in the form of powder and tiny beads — into nonhuman test subjects in laboratory trials. What happens is that the powder and beads are shot at such high velocity, they take on the properties of liquids. As Hunter noted in an MIT news article, this could be helpful in cases where some drugs can only be stored for long periods of times as powder, with the liquid forms requiring refrigeration.
Hunter said he has his colleagues at MIT built their prototype device in six months.
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