For patients with AMD or other eye diseases, medications are injected directly into the eye.  However, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University have developed a microneedle patch that can deliver medicine to the eye without pain. This was presented at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

This patch can help deliver AMD treatments; however, it can also be used for any treatment that has to be administered by a shot like a flu shot or childhood vaccinations.  The researchers administered the flu vaccine via conventional method and with the microneedle patch in mice. They then exposed the mice to the flu vaccine and measured the levels of antibodies; these were the same in both sets of mice.

The patch is being tested on mice and other non-human primates with the hope of going to human trials soon.

Read the article ^[1] and the abstract ^[2].