ISTANBUL

Chinese researchers recently achieved the world's first non-invasive insulin delivery through skin, resulting in a blood sugar-lowering effect comparable to regular insulin injections.

This discovery may allow diabetes patients who are inconvenienced by long-term injections to avoid using syringes in the future, Chinese state media reported on Tuesday.

Details regarding this revolutionary approach were recently published in the journal Nature, Xinhua News reported, citing a China Science Daily report.

This new method involves transdermal drug delivery, which is currently used for certain small-molecule drugs. It is a painless method of delivering medicine by applying a drug formulation to intact and healthy skin.

However, since the skin barrier prevents many larger molecules from penetrating, the researchers had to face the challenge of delivering biological macromolecules such as insulin through the skin.

In preliminary research, the team led by Shen Youqing, a professor at Zhejiang University's College of Chemical and Biological Engineering and co-corresponding author of the paper, discovered a polymer called OP that demonstrated exceptional permeability in tumor tissues and was capable of efficiently delivering anti-tumor drugs.

"From then, we wondered whether OP could also efficiently permeate skin tissues," Shen was quoted as saying.

In subsequent experiments, the team discovered that OP had high skin permeability. "This shattered the conventional understanding that macromolecules cannot penetrate the skin barrier," Shen said.

Through their systematic research in collaboration with science teams led by Zhou Ruhong from Zhejiang University and Chen Rongjun from Imperial College London, they discovered ways to identify specific pathways and mechanisms of OP's penetration through the skin.