A material that slips through skin might someday make needle-free insulin possible for people with diabetes.
In mice and mini pigs, attaching the permeating polymer to insulin and applying the resulting compound like a cream normalized blood glucose levels almost as quickly as injecting insulin, researchers report November 19 in Nature. This approach, called transdermal delivery, could allow people to manage diabetes using patches rather than injections.
For many essential medications, “transdermal drug delivery has been a longtime dream,” with millions of dollars invested for insulin alone, says bioengineer Youqing Shen of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. Regular insulin injections come with problems such as needle phobia, pain, skin