SNU professor Yoh Jai-Ick’s research team succeeds in the world’s first needle-free injection drug efficiency test

-improving the life quality of diabetic patients who are highly dependent on injections


▲ SNU Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Yoh Jai-Ick

 
A Korean research team developed needle-free syringes and succeeded in confirming the efficacy of a drug without pain.
 
On 19^th this month, SNU College of Engineering (dean Cha Kook-Heon) announced that Department of Mechanical and Aerospace engineering professor Yoh Jai-Ick’s research team (Jang Hun-Jae, Ham Hwi-Chan) has tested the efficacy of a drug by injecting a small amount of the drug through a needle-free injection without pain.
 
The needle-free injection developed by the team injects drug directly onto the skin. It can not only eliminate the pain and inconvenience of conventional needle-type syringe, but also prevent infection.
 
Since the drug is repetitively sprayed at a fast and constant rate of 150 m/s through a fine hole with the thickness of a hair, no pain will be felt.
 
To do this, they applied a space propulsion principle and developed a drug-spraying system that instantaneously expands a small amount of high-density energy to spray the drug.
 
As a result, the team found that the blood glucose levels were controlled as in the cases of conventional syringes when they injected insulin into type 1 diabetic mice, which no insulin is secreted. They verified for the first time in the world that the efficacy was the same as that of injecting with a conventional syringe.
 
The development of needle-free injections is expected to be a way to solve medical problems that could not be solved with needle-type syringes.
 
Prof. Yoh said, “Needle-free syringe is a novel concept analgesic drug-injecting device also suitable for protein drugs such as insulin, hormones and vaccines that are sensitive to heat and environment,” and that “I hope that this will help improve the quality of life of patients with needle fears and diabetic pediatric and adult patients who need a daily injection.
 

▲ A shot of pen-type needle-free injection onto the skin


▲ Efficacy assessment of insulin injector using diabetic mouse model