Thanks to an innovative "depot” injection approach from a team at MIT, long-lasting shots could become a lot less painful. Involving the injection of tiny, drug-delivering crystals suspended within a solvent, the team’s method could deliver drugs with thinner needles, fewer injections, and a lot less pain overall.
Describing the approach in a study in Nature Chemical Engineering, the team says that the method could work with contraceptives and other drugs that are taken consistently over time.
“We showed that we can have very controlled, sustained delivery, likely for multiple months and even years through a small needle,” said Giovanni Traverso, the senior study author and a mechanical engineering professor at MIT, according to a press release.
