Needle-free vaccine patches coming soon, say researchers and makers

Effective vaccines, without a needle: Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers have doubled down on efforts to create patches that deliver life-saving drugs painlessly to the skin, a development that could revolutionise medicine. The technique could help save children's tears at doctors' offices, and help people who have a phobia of syringes. Beyond that, skin patches could assist with distribution efforts, because they don't have cold-chain requirements - and might even heighten vaccine efficacy. A new mouse study in the area, published in the journal Science Advances, showed promising results. The Australian-US team used patches measuring one square centimetre that were dotted with more than 5,000 microscopic spikes, 'so tiny you can't actually see them,' David Muller, a virologist at the University of Queensland and co-author of the paper, told AFP.