Skip to main content

Hate needles? MIT’s new injection tech delivers multiple vaccines with one poke

Regardless of what it’s protecting you against, few people would likely say that getting a vaccine injection is an altogether enjoyable vaccine. Fortunately, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are coming to the rescue with a new 3D fabrication technique that could allow for multiple doses of a drug or vaccine to be delivered to a patient over an extended period of time — with just one jab needed.

“We figured out a way to make tiny polymer cups, smaller than a grain of sand, that can be filled with any drug, including vaccines,” Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, told Digital Trends. “Once filled, these cups are sealed with a lid made from the same material, and the drug or vaccine is protected inside. Because the microparticles are so small, hundreds can be injected into the arm just like any vaccine. Once in the body, the cups stay closed and open up at a predetermined time, releasing the drug or vaccine. This is exciting because one can fill the different cups with essentially all the vaccines and boosters, and potentially have the 10 to 20 required vaccinations all in one shot.”

Recommended Videos

These particles are made of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved polymer, which degrades once inside the human body, and allows each one to be “programmed” to degrade at a different time. In experiments involving mice, the researchers showed that the particles injected during one injection could release their contents — with no early leakage — at intervals of 9, 20, and 41 days.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

As good as this might sound to those needle-phobic folk fortunate enough to live in a part of the world with readily available health care,  the work’s most exciting application is likely to be in the developing world, where medical resources are more limited. It’s no doubt for this reason that the project attracted the interest of Bill and Melinda Gates, whose foundation funded the work.

“These micro cups could be used to deliver any drug which requires multiple injections over weeks or months,” Jaklenec said. “Single-shot vaccines is one application of this technology which could have significant impact in the developing world, where millions of children remain under-immunized as repeated patient access in some of these areas is challenging.”

A paper describing the research was recently published in the journal Science.

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
CES 2025 day 2 live blog: Garmin, Amazfit, and more
CES 2025 Live Blog

It’s been a whirlwind of a week in Las Vegas, Nevada, as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 continues to go on. We’ve covered a lot of incredible new tech from the pre show and the first official day, and we’re starting to wrap things up.

Some of the biggest news from day one included Nvidia’s RTX 5090 graphics card with beastly performance and high price tag, HyperX’s new customizable gaming mice, new futuristic EVs coming from both Sony and Honda, Razer switching to AMD for it’s thinner-than-ever Blade 16, and a crazy new 11-inch gaming PC handheld from Acer. And that’s just a few of the biggest stories from just yesterday!

Read more
Health care experts believe regenerative medicine has reached an ‘inflection point’
BrainCo Dexus prosthetic arm

Every year, companies debut cutting-edge medical technology at CES that introduces new solutions to problems and illnesses that have plagued humanity since the event's inception, and 2025 is the year that regenerative medicine shined. During a CES 2025 panel hosted by Jason Haider, CEO and founder of Xenco Medical, and Veerle Dhaenens, general manager of Global Therapy Innovations for Terumo BCT, the two experts said that the world is at an "inflection point" — a time when different fields of technology have all reached a point they can work together.

Haider called it a "1965 moment" in reference to the year that Gordon Moore published Moore's Law. Moore's Law is the idea that the number of transistors on a chip doubled every two years and acted as a metaphor for how quickly technology advanced, but it also led to the semiconductor revolution.

Read more
You Asked: What’s the most impressive thing you saw at CES?
You Asked CES Editors Cut

On today’s special edition of You Asked, we tracked down each of our editors and put them on the spot to find out what they thought was the most impressive thing they saw at CES 2025 in Early January. Let’s find out what they had to say.
Panasonic Z95B

There’s been some really cool TV tech at CES, but the thing I’m most excited about is the new Panasonic Z95B. Instead of the regular OLED display structure we’ve seen in recent years with MLA technology, this uses a four-layer panel structure. It features individual red, green, and blue layers (two of the latter) for the emissive light.

Read more