Microneedled polymer patch research garners prestigious award

Scientists from the Queen’s University Belfast (Ireland) School of Pharmacy, whose research into microneedles is taking the pain out of injections, have received the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Pharmaceutical Research Meritorious Manuscript Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in the pharmaceutical sciences, as demonstrated by the author, in the quality and originality of a manuscript published in the official AAPS journal, Pharmaceutical Research.

Related: Microneedled polymer patch, SERS couple to enable painless, real-time drug testing

It is the latest award for Dr. Ryan Donnelly and his team, whose breakthrough research has developed tiny projections that can painlessly penetrate the outer layer of the skin and be used to deliver medication or to monitor the level of drugs in a patient's body without drawing blood.

Donnelly says that his team's microneedle technology has garnered a lot of industrial interest, and they are currently working on industrial scale-up of the manufacturing methods they describe in their paper.

The Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council, Invest Northern Ireland, Wellcome Trust, the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, and Action Medical Research funded the work. To access the paper, please visit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016610.

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