The first-aid system equipped with microneedle targeted injection drone drug delivery was launched

Science and Technology Daily News (Hong Hengfei, Ke Yineng, reporter Jiang Yun) Recently, the Science and Technology Daily reporter learned from Zhejiang University that the team of Professor Gu Zhen of the School of Pharmacy of Zhejiang University and Jinhua Research Institute and other scientific research teams of the university invented a UAV-based targeted drug delivery emergency system
.
The research paper was published in the academic journal Advanced Materials
.

Patients with diseases such as sudden myocardial infarction, or those injured who have suffered serious trauma caused by accidents, are at risk
of death if they are not treated in time.
Gu Zhen introduced that this emergency system consists of a drone, a throwing drug delivery device and a microneedle patch containing emergency treatment drugs, when the drone flies to the patient, it can achieve autonomous drug delivery without other forces, aiming to solve the problem
of lack of first-aid equipment around the patient, or untimely first aid due to traffic congestion and geographical inconvenience.

Team members introduced that when the drone searches for and identifies the rescue target, it can hover at the appropriate height, and then release the throwing drug delivery device, insert the microneedle loaded with the drug into the skin of the rescue target, and the drug wrapped in the microneedle will be quickly released under the skin and circulated to the whole body through the blood to achieve the purpose of
first aid.

Gu Zhen introduced that when the trigger at the bottom of the drug delivery device touches the surface of the skin, the spring can release enough energy to insert the attached microneedle into the
skin.
Compared to manual administration, the device provides more even thrust and facilitates the penetration of microneedle patches into the skin
.

The joint team successfully implemented rapid first aid in the hypoglycemic piglet model, which effectively prevented the piglet's blood sugar from falling continuously and promoted its blood sugar to rise to the normal range
.
It is reported that this microneedle contains two release modules, the front end can quickly release the drug, the back end can respond to blood sugar changes, if the blood sugar has stabilized, the drug release will be slow.

Talking about the future application prospects, Gu Zhen said that this invention is a platform technology, some wearable physiological monitoring equipment, advanced detection or analysis systems, new drug delivery methods and drug delivery equipment can be integrated with UAV targeted drug delivery emergency system to further expand the application scenarios
of UAV-mediated drug first aid.