“Painless Injection Technology: A Breakthrough by American Experts”

Painless injection│The American research team has developed the latest “painless injection” technology, which uses air pressure to spray powdered drugs that do not need to be stored in refrigeration or gas compression, penetrate the skin and deliver them to the cells. To provide treatments for cancer and other diseases in a relatively painless way, the institute team named this technology “MOF-Jet”.

Written by: Yuuki@Medical Inspire 医． Thinking │ Image source:American Chemical Society@YouTube, Fomin Serhii @Shutterstock │ Source:University of Texas at Dallas research team

Painless injection │ Almost painless without needles? ! Improved by American experts, a new breakthrough in “painless injection” technology!

A research team at the University of Texas at Dallas (University of Texas at Dallas) has developed a new “painless injection” technology. Through the skin, the drug can be delivered to the patient’s body, and the treatment method for cancer and other diseases can be easily provided in a relatively painless way. The research team named this technology “MOF-Jet”.

Professor Jeremiah Gassensmith, the lead researcher, pointed out that at the beginning, because of the epidemic, he was bored at home and ordered cheap compressed gas-driven injection system parts for fun. After returning to campus, he gave those parts to Yalini Wijesundara, a graduate student in the laboratory, and asked her to try to “make something out” with those parts.

Wijesundara has studied jet injectors that have been around since the 1960s, when injectors typically spray a narrow stream of fluid with compressed gas. Jet syringes were also widely used in the military, but they were painful and often splashed back, posing a risk of spreading disease. And later developed the gene introduction instrument technology “gene gun”, which directly sends spherical gold powder or tungsten powder particles wrapped with DNA into intact plant tissues or cells, but those attached metal particles will infiltrate. Residues behind the skin accelerate degradation of biomaterials and are very costly.

Wijesundara then combined the injector with a Metal Organic Frameworks (MOF) zeolitic-imidazolate framework eight (ZIF-8) in the lab. MOF consists of metal atoms or atomic clusters coordinated by organic ligands to form a porous crystal structure, which can encapsulate various materials, including nucleic acids and proteins. It is often used in gas adsorption, gas storage, gas separation, catalysts and other fields, and ZIF-8 is cheaper than gold, and can effectively protect biological materials such as nucleic acids. Finally, the painless injection technology “MOF-Jet” was created.

The MOF-Jet jet delivers the powder into the cells via air jets, Wijesundara points out: “We can also store vaccine formulations in it as powders at room temperature, so that they don’t have to be stored in the extreme cold like liquid vaccines. Wijesundara also found that due to the sensitive nature of ZIF-8 to acidic environments, when carbon dioxide reacts with water in cells, ZIF-8 will produce carbonic acid, which in turn helps to decompose MOF. Wijesundara also realized that by changing the injection The carrier gas of the device is used to adjust the drug release. “When carbon dioxide is used as the injection carrier gas, the drug will be released faster in the cells; if ordinary air is used, it will take four to five days.”

The “MOF-Jet” technology has been preliminarily proven to be feasible in mouse experiments. The research team is now studying this method as a potential treatment for delivering chemotherapy drugs and adjuvants to melanoma skin cancer. Because the “MOF-Jet” can disperse the drug material over a wide area, it will be able to spread the cancer more evenly than using needles. Therapeutic drug distribution in melanoma. And as long as the carrier gas is adjusted, the fast or slow release time range can be controlled according to the needs of patients, so as to accurately provide chemotherapy drugs. The research team believes that this technology could allow for widespread use in veterinary medicine, agriculture, and even human vaccination or treatment in the future. Research was supported by grants from the U.S. Army Research Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the Welch Foundation.