Overlook needles—this 3D printed patch simply launched with critical backing. Stanford College professor and Carbon co-founder Dr. Joseph DeSimone has formally launched PinPrint, a brand new startup creating 3D printed microneedle patches that ship medication and vaccines via the pores and skin—no syringe required. Constructed on analysis from Stanford, the College of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, and Carbon, PinPrint goals to shake up how remedies are given throughout drugs and cosmetics.
That imaginative and prescient is now getting a lift from Continuity Biosciences. The Florida-based drug supply firm is backing the launch with a brand new funding, giving it entry to a non-invasive technique for delivering remedies, this time via the pores and skin as an alternative of implants. Till now, Continuity has targeted on long-term implantable drug methods developed with researchers in Houston. With PinPrint, it’s stepping right into a next-generation needle-free method.
Joseph DeSimone, Founding father of Carbon and PinPrint. Picture courtesy of Stanford College.
PinPrint was based round a expertise developed by DeSimone, a professor of chemical engineering and radiology at Stanford. He’s additionally the co-founder and present board member of Carbon, the place he served as CEO from 2013 to 2019. His staff addressed a crucial problem in 3D printing—resin over-curing in tiny areas—by creating the injection Steady Liquid Interface Manufacturing (iCLIP) technique. This innovation permits the creation of ultra-precise microneedles and microfluidic channels important for superior medical units.
The corporate’s lead product is a microneedle patch designed to ship medication instantly into the pores and skin and not using a syringe, providing a easy, pain-free various. As highlighted in a 2025 Stanford Journal profile, DeSimone’s newest work focuses on microneedle patches that not solely ship vaccines extra successfully, but additionally simplify storage and self-administration. By concentrating on the dermis, the place immune cells are concentrated, these patches may make vaccines stronger, simpler to distribute, and fewer depending on cold-chain logistics.
Past drug supply, the staff behind PinPrint sees potential in utilizing the identical microneedle platforms for diagnostics. By accumulating interstitial fluid—a transparent liquid that surrounds cells within the physique—the patches may someday monitor issues like glucose ranges or immune responses, all with out breaking the pores and skin. These sorts of capabilities trace at a future the place healthcare shouldn’t be solely “much less invasive but additionally extra steady and customized.”
The broader implications of PinPrint’s work and Continuity Biosciences’ growth into non-invasive remedy platforms level to a rising shift in how medication and information may transfer via the physique. As an alternative of counting on chilly storage, needles, or physician visits, the subsequent wave of medication could possibly be delivered like a sticker: principally easy, scalable, and exactly engineered via 3D printing, and most significantly, to sufferers: pain-free.
This concept strains up with a broad imaginative and prescient shared by futurists and longevity consultants like doctor and entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis, founder and chairman of the XPRIZE Basis. In a latest Future Medication weblog publish, Diamandis argued that the approaching decade may convey radical adjustments in healthcare, powered by AI and smarter supply methods. He advises staying wholesome lengthy sufficient to learn from what’s coming.
3D printing microneedles with complicated geometries. Picture courtesy of Stanford College.
“We people have 100 to 1,000 occasions extra immune cells within the dermis of our pores and skin than we do in our muscle,” DeSimone stated in his Stanford Journal interview. “For those who may successfully goal this center layer of pores and skin, he says the advantages would vary from requiring a fraction of the standard dose—essential in epidemics, just like the latest mpox outbreak, so there’s sufficient to go round—to engaging needlephobes to get vaccinated. The biggest producer of vaccines has advised me the largest inhibitor for getting a seasonal vaccine trifecta of influenzas, COVID, and RSV is that individuals hate needles.”
DeSimone’s work has formed each the chemistry lab and the manufacturing facility ground. As a professor at UNC, he helped pioneer safer, greener applied sciences, from an eco-friendly approach to make Teflon to a bioabsorbable coronary heart stent. Nonetheless, it was on the planet of 3D printing that DeSimone made his greatest mark. In 2013, he co-founded Carbon, the corporate behind the high-speed resin printing course of CLIP. Carbon helped flip 3D printing into a real manufacturing software, most famously via its ongoing partnership with Adidas, which in 2025 launched a brand new totally 3D printed shoe. Now with PinPrint, DeSimone is bringing that very same mixture of science and industrial affect to healthcare.
The r2rCLIP setup within the DeSimone lab runs from proper to left. The printing happens within the space under the crimson piece. Picture courtesy of DeSimone Analysis Group.
That transfer into drugs now has the backing of Continuity Biosciences. The corporate, which often works on implanted drug methods for continual diseases, sees this as a approach to attempt one thing new— delivering remedies via the pores and skin, with out needles.
“This funding permits us to develop from implanted nanofluidic methods to a non-implanted microfluidic platform,” stated Ramakrishna Venugopalan, Co-Founder and CEO of Continuity Biosciences. “It opens the door for more practical supply of dermatologic, aesthetic, and beauty brokers instantly into the dermis.”
As a part of the settlement, Venugopalan will be a part of PinPrint’s board. PinPrint’s CEO, Renee Ryan, stated his management and expertise in drug supply will “be instrumental, as we redefine what’s potential in drug and vaccine supply.”
Continuity, which additionally has operations in Houston, has targeted on long-term drug supply for continual illnesses. PinPrint brings a unique approach: non-invasive, customized patches for issues like vaccines, dermatology, and probably even magnificence remedies. Each firms say the partnership goals to make remedies simpler, extra exact, and extra snug for sufferers.
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