Gold and Helium Combine for Needle-Free Injections

Mr. Jaggers writes "U.K. biotech outfit, PowderMed Ltd., has developed a new method to deliver vaccine using an injector powered by concentrated helium gas. They enclose fragments of virus DNA in tiny gold particles, and use the injector to introduce particles into the body subdermally. Evidently, this has been in the works for some time, but is now ready for human clinical tests. Oh, and this is supposed to be used experimentally to target the H5N1 avian flu, which is also cool, I suppose."

Comments

What next? Discovering Polio vaccine?

[megaditto]

This 'new method' is some 20+ years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_gun

I'd tell the submitter where to shove such 'new methods', but it appears that has already been done:

Chen et al. Immunity obtained by gene-gun inoculation of a rotavirus DNA vaccine to the abdominal epidermis or anorectal epithelium.Vaccine. 1999 Aug 6;17(23-24):3171-6

Re:Influenza is an Orthomyxovirus

[megaditto]

Need to use DNA because RNA is unstable. RNA and DNA are interconvertible, but the naked RNA molecule will be chopped up and eaten by the cell. Even if it didn't, it would also need (at least) a reverse transcriptase, (an RNA-dependant DNA polymerase enzyme) to go from RNA->DNA before the cell can start making viral proteins.

Since RNA has absolutely no chance for to survive or integrate without the viral enzymes, so gene-guns have to use DNA.

Re:Air bubbles?

[bobscealy]

Air bubbles in the blood stream arent that much of a big deal, you need to have quite a bit before it is a problem. I had 4 months of chemotherapy a year back and when they are changing lines etc I was shocked at the amount of air that went in, the nurse said lots of people freak out. The wierd thing is you can feel the air going in, which is a bit spooky.

Re:More practitioners

[Kadin2048]

I don't really think this is going to change anything. The injections that this is replacing are mostly intra-muscular, so (assuming they're in your protocols) you could do them right now.

The reason Paramedics drop lines is less to introduce drugs but to add fluid volume, saline or blood. You can't do that intramuscularly, or without a needle. Once you have the line inserted as a way of adding volume, it's an easy way to give drugs (and there are admittedly drugs that are intended for intravascular use instead of IM), but a needle-less IM system wouldn't replace most IV insertions.

Unless you could find some way to continuously pump fluids into a vein without a catheter in place to keep it open, but I don't think anyone has proposed a needleless sytem that does that.