If history has taught something, it’s the fact that there is literally no end to what all humans can do. Just when it feels like we have reached our peak, we come up with a breakthrough to raise the ceiling a notch up. Now, our ability to do so is aided by many factors. However, humans’ skill to draw inspiration from the world around them has to be one of the most important orchestrators of the said upgrade. This tool in our arsenal alone ensures that we never run out of productive ideas, therefore keeping us moving through every thick and thin. Upon giving it a closer look, we can see a ton of examples that were very much weaved together by our ability to envision on the basis of our reality, but the most important one from the lot is, hands down, technology. Grounded in our desire to have a more inventive take across various disciplines, technology has successfully delivered on its promise of elevating our lives. What’s make this whole thing even more unique is the way in which it was achieved. You’d think one cannot outdo the discovery of technology, but we did that by scaling it up to help the creation reach a level where nothing really remained out of its reach. As a result of it, a particular area that now seems to be looking at limitless possibilities is healthcare. The integration of technology’s presence in the medical sector has been so extensive that the field has switched to a completely different trajectory, and a key to its next leap was recently delivered by Georgia Tech.
A team of scientists at Georgia Tech has developed a battery-free electroporation device called ePatch, which can be used to inject DNA vaccines across the board. Interestingly, the design of this device is inspired by BBQ lighters. However, instead of the electric spark that usually emerges from BBQ lighters, we have electroporation and its effects running the show here. In a world ravaged by Covid 19, the importance of DNA vaccines is well-known, but so far, we haven’t been able to complement that importance with a more universal approach. For instance, Covid 19 vaccines using lipid nanoparticles to encase the DNA gives way to a scenario where we have some non-negotiable storage requirements to meet. Such a requirement makes the whole operation far more expensive, and even if we keep aside the financial part for a second, the logistics of shipping something of this sort throughout the world are almost impossible to fulfill. The Georgia Tech’s discovery changes that big time.
By putting its bets on electroporation, the researching team has eliminated any need of lipid nanoparticles. They have replaced it with a combination of microneedle technology and piezoelectric sparking mechanism from a BBQ lighter, thus bringing down the costs significantly.
According to the reports, the team has conducted initial device tests on mice, and the results have been encouraging to say the least.
“Surprisingly, even in the first try, it went far beyond my expectations. Using this method with the same amount of vaccine, the ePatch induced an almost tenfold improved immune response over intramuscular immunization or intradermal injection without electroporation,” says Changlai Yang, one of the researchers involved in the study.
