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Monday, August 21, 2006

Jellyfish Injections?

Remember the times you used to play on the beach and get stung by a stray jellyfish? Well, now that can be put to good use. Jellyfish have stinging cells called cnidocysts that shoot a tiny hollow thread into offending objects and then inject a toxin into them. A company called NanoCyte wants to use those cells to deliver drugs or apply tattoos. All they need to do is incubate the cells at 70 degrees Celsius for a few minutes to extract the toxin and then soak them in whatever chemical they want to deliver. Combine the cells into a patch and apply pressure and low voltage electric pulses and voila! A quick, painless injection.

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