Engineers create way to deliver drugs painlessly Published:
Monday, January 23, 2012 Updated: Monday, January 23, 2012 07:01
Six researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering have
created a new drug delivery system using silk-based microneedles
that can make administering medicine painless. Using protein in
silk — instead of the metal, polymers and silicon wafers that
previous microneedle designs used — was a major improvement and
provides many benefits, according to Postdoctoral Associate
Waseem Raja, one of the co-authors of the paper. The
microneedles are only around 500 microns, approximately a half a
millimeter, long according to PhD candidate Konstantinos
Tsioris, another co-author of the paper. "They only penetrate
the top layer of the skin and don't reach down to the layer
where the nerves are," Tsioris said. "If you apply this type of
needle, you wouldn't feel any pain as you would with a
traditional hypodermic needle." Raja explained that silk is both
biodegradable and biocompatible, which