Injecting a Force of Disruption into the Pharmaceutical Market

The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing a shift from daily tablet regimens to long-acting medications that can be injected monthly allowing patients to spend less time actively treating their disease, bettering patient mental health. The barrier to development of long-acting injectable medications is the high drug concentration required, which results in highly viscous medications that are difficult to administer in standard syringes. In this report, we describe the invention of a device that enables clinicians to inject highly viscous fluids through 3ml syringes with standard needles to aid clinical evaluation of long-acting injectable drugs. Our device works via a mechanism similar to that of a caulk gun: the user squeezes the handle and a cam-lock lever amplifies this force, which then pushes a drive rod onto the syringe plunger. The drive rod runs through a tab connected to the output of the handle, and the tab can rotate about the handle. The rotation causes the drive tab to put force on the drive rod when the user actuates the handle. This system ensured that the device passed our high priority requirement to require less than 53N of force to inject the medication, requiring only 33.6N of force to actuate during testing. The device will allow clinicians to inject 300cP medication from a standard 3ml syringe through multiple actuations of the device. This work represents a vital stepping stone to help reduce the time to develop long-acting injectables by enabling manual injection of these high-viscosity medications without the need for additional development of autoinjectors for patient testing. Our prototype meets Gilead's initial specification, but to facilitate use in clinical settings, manufacturing the device in a sterilizable material, and redesigning a simpler cover for the syringe would be a priority.