Researchers at Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland have demonstrated a needle-free jet injection increases the amount of cancer treatment agent when treating skin cancer. By producing a high velocity liquid jet with sufficient intensity to pierce the skin, it could potentially improve the effectiveness of skin cancer treatment. The University’s School of Pharmacy PhD student Desmond Morrow, who had completed the research along with his team, presented the research at the British Pharmaceutical Conference (BPC) in Manchester.
The research team found that compared to application with a bioadhesive patch, the jet injector was shown to significantly increase the amount of drug that could be delivered through the skin. This new way of administering the drug can improve the amount that crosses the skin barrier and gets to the required site. Where as, Photodynamic therapy, a relatively new form of skin cancer treatment, which results in tumour death, however, sometimes its success in individual patients is limited by the poor penetration of the active agent into the tumour.
