Novel mobile printer creates on-demand, dissolvable vaccine patches

Researchers have developed a mobile printer that creates temperature-stable, dissolvable vaccine patches on demand. The novel device not only does away with vaccine injections, but it would also enable vaccines to be delivered to remote areas.

Vaccines, including mRNA vaccines, are fragile biological substances. If they’re exposed to temperatures outside the recommended storage range – between 35 °F/2 °C and 46 °F/8 °C – they can become less effective or even destroyed. This means that getting them to remote areas that don’t have the required cold storage, such as in low- and middle-income countries, can be difficult.

MIT researchers may have developed the solution: a mobile printer that uses novel dissolvable microneedle patches (MNPs) to deliver vaccines directly into the skin.

Using a high-precision robotic dispenser and microneedle molds, the researchers created patches the size of a thumbnail with hundreds of microneedles that were small, sharp and accurate enough to deliver vaccines to humans. They incorporated a stabilizing dissolvable polymer into a bioink made of RNA vaccine molecules encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles (LNP).

Once the patches are printed, a robotic arm injects the bioink into the microneedle molds, and a vacuum sucks the ink to the bottom, ensuring that it is in the needle’s tip. When the patch is applied, the microneedle tips under the skin dissolve, releasing the vaccine without the need for a traditional intramuscular injection. And there's no need to dispose of hazardous and environmentally unfriendly syringes and needles.

Image source: MIT, CC BY-ND.