Posted February 4, 2008 Atlanta Research News & Publications
Office Contact John Toon First peer-reviewed human study shows
devices can deliver drugs In what is believed to be the first
peer-reviewed study of its kind involving human subjects,
researchers at the University of Kentucky and the Georgia
Institute of Technology have demonstrated that patches coated on
one side with microscopic needles can facilitate transdermal
delivery of clinically-relevant doses of a drug that normally
cannot pass through the skin. Reported in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study could
help advance the use of microneedles as a painless method for
delivering drugs, proteins, DNA and vaccines into the body. The
research also found other advantages for the microneedles,
including an ability to produce therapeutic drug levels with
lower doses, and lowered production of metabolites that may
cause side-effects. "This proof-of-concept study shows that
microneedles work in humans for transdermal drug