SSS 2011-12-29（在线收听）

nobody likes getting shots, but what if you could make the needles so tiny that they broke skin painlessly. engineers from top university have created such micro needles, made from major protein in silk, fibrolin. the work is in the journal of advanced functional materials. The researchers created models for arrays of needles just 500 microns tall and 10 microns wide. that’s tenth width of the average of human hair. they then put a solution of fibrolin mixed with the drugs in the molds. the resulting microneedles are dried and undergo for the processing. in tests, a patch containing numerous microneedles successfully released the drug. which maintained its biological activity. the tiny needles are too short to reach the nerves under the skin, so they can deliver drugs without pain of traditional shot. even better, they can gradually release the medication over time.while skin patches and slow release pills are currently use for this purposes. they only work with certain kinds of medication. the new microneedle system could make gradual delivery of many kinds of drugs smooth as silk.