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A Flu Vaccine That Could Be Delivered By Mail

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A Flu Vaccine That Could Be Delivered By Mail Empty A Flu Vaccine That Could Be Delivered By Mail

Post by balloon Thu Jul 22, 2010 6:58 pm

A Flu Vaccine That Could Be Delivered By Mail
Debra Black
July 21, 2010
Link

Sometime soon your annual flu vaccine may come to you by mail in the form of a microneedle patch, thanks to the work of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University.

The patch is like a Band-aid with tiny needles no bigger than the width of a hair, which are made up of a polymer substance that’s water soluble, according to Mark Prausnitz, a chemical and bio-chemical engineer and professor at Georgia Institute of Technology.

The researchers successfully tested the patch on mice and have reported their findings in a recent edition of Nature Medicine. In the study, the patches delivered the correct dose of the flu vaccine.

The results of the study “suggest that dissolving microneedle patches can provide a new technology for simpler and safer vaccination with improved immunogenicity that could facilitate increased vaccination coverage,” the article in Nature Medicine said.

The next step for the microneedle patch, which is said to feel kind of like fine sandpaper on the skin, is a human trail, but Prausnitz said the group is awaiting word on a funding request with the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The way the patch works is simple, Prausnitz told the Star. It is applied directly to the skin like a Band-aid. The tiny needles, which have the vaccine inside them, pierce the skin and deliver the flu vaccine to the subject. The tiny needles dissolve into the skin, Prausnitz said, and the patch is removed.

Birth-control drugs are already delivered via a patch, as are a number of other drugs. But in those cases the medication is absorbed directly through the skin. With this patch, the needles pierce the skin and deliver the medication that way like thousands of tiny needles.

There could be a lot of other uses for the microneedle patch, Prausnitz said, including the delivery of insulin for diabetics.

With health authorities around the world increasingly calling for a widespread vaccination every year, Prausnitz and his team thought it would be a good idea to develop another method of delivery over injections by doctors and nurses. Many people don’t have time to go to the doctor or are fearful of a hypodermic needle.

The microneedle patch would empower patients to allow them to give themselves their own flu vaccine, not only saving them time but possibly saving the healthcare system money, Prausnitz said. Doctors and nurses spend untold hours giving out vaccines when they could be doing other things.

In fact the microneedle patch might eventually be used to deliver all kinds of vaccines and could potentially revolutionize the way some drugs and or vaccines are administered, the scientist said.

“This is a collaborative study, involving the engineers at Georgia Tech and bioscientists at Emory University,” he said. “As engineers we can design the device and understand the need. At Emory they understand the need but can’t make the device. It is a nice cross-fertilization.”
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Kimmy Gibbler

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