On-patient medical record and mRNA therapeutics using intradermal microneedles
Medical interventions often require timed series of doses, thus necessitating accurate medical record-keeping. In many global settings, these records are unreliable or unavailable at the point of care, leading to less effective treatments or disease prevention. Here we present an invisible-to-the-naked-eye on-patient medical record-keeping technology that accurately stores medical information in the patient skin as part of microneedles that are used for intradermal therapeutics. We optimize the microneedle design for both a reliable delivery of messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and the near-infrared fluorescent microparticles that encode the on-patient medical record-keeping. Deep learning-based image processing enables encoding and decoding of the information with excellent temporal and spatial robustness. Long-term studies in a swine model demonstrate the safety, efficacy and reliability of this approach for the co-delivery of on-patient medical record-keeping and the mRNA vaccine encoding severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This technology could help healthcare workers make informed decisions in circumstances where reliable record-keeping is unavailable, thus contributing to global healthcare equity.
Authors
- Linzixuan Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7163-4906)
- Sydney L. Pyon
- Alexandra Lau (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6929-4018)
- Lisa H. Tostanoski (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9255-5684)
- L. Campbell Levy
- Shahad K. Alsaiari (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3293-3249)
- Sebastian E. Carrasco (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1926-7296)
- Jooli Han (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5115-7791)
- Róbert Langer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4255-0492)
- Maria Kanelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0031-8866)
- Behnaz Eshaghi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4543-4067)
- Collin F. Perkinson
- Dan H. Barouch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5127-4659)
- Khanh T. M. Tran (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5331-4068)
- Apurva Pardeshi
- Ana Jaklenec (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6096-0538)
- John L. Daristotle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3523-5390)
- Timothy A. Forster
- Ari Karchin
- Erika Yan Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1634-7493)
- Frédo Durand (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9919-069X)
- Lukas Murmann
- Yang Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5787-0934)
- Stacey Qiaohui Lin
- Moungi G. Bawendi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2220-4365)
- Charles Sloane (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4340-8284)
- Brandon Folk
Institutions
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (US)
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Seoul National University (KR)
- Cornell University (US)
- Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard (US)
- Bellevue Hospital Center (US)
- IIT@MIT (US)
- Intellectual Ventures (United States) (US)
- Mass General Brigham (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Rockefeller University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Materials
- Published
- 2025-02-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-02115-4
- Citations
- 28
- Primary Topic
- Advancements in Transdermal Drug Delivery
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 22.14
Funders
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation