Puffs Of Air Could Deliver ‘Painless’ Vaccines That Pass Through Human Skin

Researchers at the University of Texas, Dallas, have recently developed a novel vaccine that not only doesn’t require refrigeration but can also be delivered in a “relatively painless way” by being puffed through human skin.

Dubbed the MOF-Jet, the vaccine was actually a result of pandemic boredom, when Jeremiah Gassensmith, PhD, ordered an inexpensive compress gas-powered jet injection system to experiment with while in lockdown.

He then turned the pieces over to graduate student Yalini Wijesundara, who tapped into her previous research on jet injectors from the 1960s that used compressed gas to streams of fluid into military personnel.

However, the technology back then wasn’t up to scratch, as many of the jet injectors used were painful, and the fluid often splashed back, resulting in the spread of serious diseases such as Hepatitis B.

Wijesundara came up with “bullets” for an updated version of the device, which allowed researchers to pass gas-fired powdered formulations of functionalized ZIF-8 into cells, in a series of steps that were described as simple as “pointing and shooting.”

First testing on onion cells and mice, the team found that the MOF-Jet managed to deliver the ZIF-8 encased gene to the test subjects and that a puff from the injector feels akin to getting hit by “a Nerf bullet,” which appears to be less painful than a regular needle.

At the moment, researchers are using this innovative method to deliver chemotherapeutics and adjuvants as a forthcoming treatment for melanoma, as it can disperse medication over a wider area more evenly than a needle.

In the future, Wijesundara and Gassensmith believe the MOF-Jet can be adapted to be used in a whole variety of scenarios, ranging from typical human vaccinations to animals in veterinary medicine.

[via Interesting Engineering and American Chemical Society / EurekAlert, images via Jeremiah Gassensmith / EurekAlert]