Nicolle Wilke won the UCC Science for All competition last week for her jargon-free speech on pain-free microneedles, writes Dick Ahlstrom.
Medical syringes will lose their sting if Nicolle Wilke has anything to do with it. She is producing needles made of silicon that are so small they don't even reach the nerve cells in the skin - and so don't cause pain.
Wilke is a PhD student conducting research in University College Cork's Tyndall National Institute. She is part of a group headed by Dr Anthony Morrissey of the biomedical microsystems team, who for the past five years has been working on microneedles.
She has spent the last three years making and characterising tiny needles that she and Morrissey hope will provide a completely new kind of medical injection.
Last week Wilke won the second annual Science for All competition at UCC, in which postgraduate participants explained their research work to a lay audience using ordinary, jargon-free language. The title of her talk was "Microneedles - forget about pain and anxiety".
"Our research is about the fabrication of microneedles," she explains. "They can be any size but our preferred needles are about 0.3mm long and 0.2mm across." The diameter of a typical human hair is about 0.2mm, to give an indication of just how tiny these needles are.
Originally from Erfurt in Germany, Wilke's undergraduate degree from the Technical University of Ilmenau focused on material science.She decided to pursue her PhD in Cork because she knew of the Tyndall and its research programme. "There are really good collaborations between UCC and Ilmenau. A number of students from Ilmenau went there and it is a well known place," Wilke says.
Most of us are familiar with stainless steel needles, but Wilke's research involves silicon. Much of the technology she and her colleagues use to form silicon needles was developed for the microelectronics industry, which uses silicon in the production of etched and shaped semiconductors. "You can etch it in a liquid solution or in gases. You can remove material from the surface to form such tiny needle shapes," explains Wilke.
The new kind of needle she proposes requires a shift in conventional thinking. For starters, they don't need to be hollow. The needle shapes can be coated with a drug or a liquid drug can be poured onto the skin and then the needles applied to deliver a dose.
Ordinary syringes are "blunt" instruments that go unnecessarily deep into the flesh, causing pain and tissue damage in the process. "These tiny needles are really good because they only go as deep into the skin as needed," she explains.
Most drugs and vaccinations only need to get to the base of the outer layer of skin cells, the epidermis, she says. "With vaccinations you don't need to go so deep into the skin." This also means that the injections actually can't cause pain. "It means the needle would be painless because it doesn't go deep enough to reach the nerves."
There are many advantages associated with this kind of needle, she believes. "If the drug is expensive it is important to reduce the amount of material you put into the skin." These needles would deliver only the tiniest among of drug or vaccine directly to where it is needed within the skin tissue.
"If the needles are integrated into a patch, it is also possible for anyone to use it. In the third world anyone could self-inoculate, you wouldn't need a doctor," she says.
Dr Morrissey and his group are also looking at integrating microneedle array chips into an endoscope or laparoscope to treat cancer tumours in a process known as electroporation. Here the needles are coated with a very thin layer of platinum and used as electrodes to enhance the uptake of cancer drugs into the tumour, he says.
The Science for All competition took place on March 22nd at UCC, chaired by Irish Times columnist Prof William Reville. The judges included the Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Deirdre Clune, Discover Science & Engineering head Peter Brabazon, Scope presenter Kathriona Devereux, Niall Murray of the Irish Examiner and RTÉ Cork's Jennie O'Sullivan.