Overlook needles—this 3D printed patch simply launched with severe backing. Stanford College professor and Carbon co-founder Dr. Joseph DeSimone has formally launched PinPrint, a brand new startup growing 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 therapies 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 methodology for delivering therapies, this time via the pores and skin as a substitute of implants. Till now, Continuity has targeted on long-term implantable drug techniques developed with researchers in Houston. With PinPrint, it’s stepping right into a next-generation needle-free strategy.
Joseph DeSimone, Founding father of Carbon and PinPrint. Picture courtesy of Stanford College.
PinPrint was based round a know-how 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 workforce addressed a crucial problem in 3D printing—resin over-curing in tiny areas—by growing the injection Steady Liquid Interface Manufacturing (iCLIP) methodology. This innovation allows 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 straight into the pores and skin and not using a syringe, providing a easy, pain-free different. As highlighted in a 2025 Stanford Journal profile, DeSimone’s newest work focuses on microneedle patches that not solely ship vaccines extra successfully, but in addition simplify storage and self-administration. By focusing 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 workforce 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 at some point 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 in addition 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 knowledge would possibly transfer via the physique. As an alternative of counting on chilly storage, needles, or physician visits, the following wave of medication might 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 carry radical modifications in healthcare, powered by AI and smarter supply techniques. He advises staying wholesome lengthy sufficient to profit from what’s coming.
3D printing microneedles with advanced 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 mentioned 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 everyday dose—essential in epidemics, just like the latest mpox outbreak, so there’s sufficient to go round—to engaging needlephobes to get vaccinated. The most important producer of vaccines has instructed me the most important 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 unit ground. As a professor at UNC, he helped pioneer safer, greener applied sciences, from an eco-friendly option to make Teflon to a bioabsorbable coronary heart stent. Nonetheless, it was on this planet of 3D printing that DeSimone made his largest 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 device, 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 influence to healthcare.
The r2rCLIP setup within the DeSimone lab runs from proper to left. The printing happens within the space beneath the crimson piece. Picture courtesy of DeSimone Analysis Group.
That transfer into drugs now has the backing of Continuity Biosciences. The corporate, which normally works on implanted drug techniques for power sicknesses, sees this as a option to strive one thing new— delivering therapies via the pores and skin, with out needles.
“This funding permits us to increase from implanted nanofluidic techniques to a non-implanted microfluidic platform,” mentioned Ramakrishna Venugopalan, Co-Founder and CEO of Continuity Biosciences. “It opens the door for simpler supply of dermatologic, aesthetic, and beauty brokers straight into the dermis.”
As a part of the settlement, Venugopalan will be a part of PinPrint’s board. PinPrint’s CEO, Renee Ryan, mentioned 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 power ailments. PinPrint brings a unique approach: non-invasive, customized patches for issues like vaccines, dermatology, and doubtlessly even magnificence therapies. Each firms say the partnership goals to make therapies simpler, extra exact, and extra snug for sufferers.
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