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 medicine 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 medication 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 programs developed with researchers in Houston. With PinPrint, it’s stepping right into a next-generation needle-free method.
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 group addressed a essential 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 gadgets.
The corporate’s lead product is a microneedle patch designed to ship medicine straight into the pores and skin with out 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 additionally 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 group behind PinPrint sees potential in utilizing the identical microneedle platforms for diagnostics. By amassing 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 additionally extra steady and personalised.”
The broader implications of PinPrint’s work and Continuity Biosciences’ enlargement into non-invasive therapy platforms level to a rising shift in how medicine 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: mainly easy, scalable, and exactly engineered via 3D printing, and most significantly, to sufferers: pain-free.
This concept traces up with a broad imaginative and prescient shared by futurists and longevity specialists like doctor and entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis, founder and chairman of the XPRIZE Basis. In a latest Future Medication weblog submit, Diamandis argued that the approaching decade may convey radical modifications in healthcare, powered by AI and smarter supply programs. He advises staying wholesome lengthy sufficient to learn from what’s coming.
3D printing microneedles with advanced geometries. Picture courtesy of Stanford College.
“We people have 100 to 1,000 instances extra immune cells within the dermis of our pores and skin than we do in our muscle,” DeSimone mentioned in his Stanford Journal interview. “If you happen to 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 attractive needlephobes to get vaccinated. The most important producer of vaccines has instructed 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 flooring. 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. Nevertheless, 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 impression to healthcare.
The r2rCLIP setup within the DeSimone lab runs from proper to left. The printing happens within the space under the pink piece. Picture courtesy of DeSimone Analysis Group.
That transfer into medication now has the backing of Continuity Biosciences. The corporate, which often works on implanted drug programs for continual diseases, sees this as a option to attempt one thing new— delivering remedies via the pores and skin, with out needles.
“This funding permits us to develop from implanted nanofluidic programs to a non-implanted microfluidic platform,” mentioned Ramakrishna Venugopalan, Co-Founder and CEO of Continuity Biosciences. “It opens the door for more practical 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 continual illnesses. PinPrint brings a special approach: non-invasive, personalised patches for issues like vaccines, dermatology, and doubtlessly even magnificence remedies. Each firms say the partnership goals to make remedies simpler, extra exact, and extra snug for sufferers.
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