A new biolistic intradermal injector

Abstract

We present a novel intradermal needle-free drug delivery device which exploits the unsteady high-speed flow produced by aminia ture shock tube to entrain drug or vaccine particles onto a skin target. A first clinical study of pain and physiological response of human subjects study is presented, comparing the new injector to intramuscular needle injection. This clinical study, performed according to established pain assessment protocols, demonstrated that every single subject felt noticeably less pain with the needle-free injector than with the needle injection. Regarding local tolerance and skin reaction, bleeding was observed onall volunteer safter needle injection, but on none of the subjects following powder injection. An assessment of the pharmacodynamics, via blood pressure, of pure captopril powder using the new device on spontaneously hypertensive rats was also performed. It was found that every animal tested with the needle-free injector exhibited the expected pharmacodynamic response following captopril injection. Finally, the new injector was used to study the delivery of anin activated influenza vaccine in mice. The needle-free device induced serum antibody response to the influenza vaccine that was comparable to that of subcutaneous needle injection, but without requiring the use of an adjuvant. Although no effort was made to optimize the formulation or the injection parameters in the present study, the novel injector demonstrates great promise for the rapid, safe and painless intradermal delivery of systemic drugs and vaccines.