Mollusks have inspired a needle-free way to administer injections.

Thanks to modern science, many painful diagnostic and treatment methods now have "harmless" alternatives. For instance, the authors of a recent study discovered a way to convert intravenous medications into oral forms, and earlier, non-invasive biopsy techniques emerged.

Often, inspiration for improving existing treatment methods comes from observing the animal kingdom. For example, thanks to ground squirrels, medical professionals developed a non-surgical method to eliminate cataracts, while zebra danios, a type of aquarium fish, helped researchers understand how to more effectively recover from neurotrauma and combat chronic stress.

Experts from several universities in the USA, Denmark, and Sweden devised a way to deliver medication directly into the gastrointestinal tract without using needles. The study describing this method and analyzing its effectiveness was published in the scientific journal Nature.

The authors of the article created a special device that can be swallowed like a regular capsule but operates on the principle of jet propulsion seen in cephalopods. Members of this class, such as octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish, forcefully expel a jet of water, propelling themselves in the opposite direction.

Researchers developed a micro-jet drug delivery system that enters the gastrointestinal tract, ejects medication under high pressure, and then is naturally expelled from the body. Testing of the system on pigs and dogs showed that it provides targeted drug delivery, comparable in effectiveness to subcutaneous injections.

This new method can be used, for example, for administering insulin, vaccines, and monoclonal antibodies. Furthermore, the authors of the publication noted that it could enhance endoscopic methods for delivering drugs to internal organs.

According to the scientists, further improvements are needed for the micro-jet drug delivery mechanism (for instance, reducing the device size to prevent gastrointestinal blockages) and testing the method on humans. If successful, this development could eliminate the need for needles in administering certain medications and reduce patients' stress levels associated with treatment.