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.