Injections without needles

摘要

Pharmaceutical companies are showing increasing interest in new methods of drug delivery. Tim Chapman reports on developments in the market. When UK pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Wellcome signed a research deal with biotech minnow PowderJect Pharmaceuticals early last month, it signalled its intent to cure one of medicine's enduring problems — fear of needles. The £200M deal will seek to develop and market an alternative method of drug delivery. PowderJect, based in Oxford, UK, and in California and Wisconsin, US, has developed a novel means of injecting pharmaceuticals without a hypodermic needle. The drug, formulated as microscopic particles, is painlessly blasted through the patient's skin in a supersonic jet of helium gas.