iScience: Painless tattoos that can be self-managed

Instead of sitting on a tattoo chair for hours enduring painful punctures, imagine getting a tattoo with a patch of skin containing tiny needles

Mark Prousnitz, the paper's lead researcher, said: "We shrunk the needle to make it painless, but still effectively deposited tattoo ink on the

Tattoos are used medically to mask scars, guide repeated radiation therapy for cancer, or repair nipples after breast surgery

There are already a variety of cosmetics on the market that use microneedles – mostly for anti-aging – but the development of microneedles for tattoos is still new

"We see this as an opportunity

Put a tattoo

Tattoos often use large needles to repeatedly pierce the skin to obtain a good image, which is a time-consuming and painful process

"Because microneedles are made of tattoo ink, they can deposit ink in the

In this way, the microneedle can be pressed on the skin once and then dissolved, after a few minutes the ink remains on the skin without bleeding

Tattoo techniques

While most microneedle patches used in pharmaceuticals or cosmetics have dozens or hundreds of microneedles arranged in a square or circle, the patterns left behind by microneedle patch tattoos may include letters, numbers, symbols, and images

The researchers started with a mold containing microneedles, and the patterns of these microneedles formed an image

Prausnitz's lab has been working on microneedles for vaccine delivery for years and realized they could be equally applicable to tattoos

The tattoos are also designed with privacy

Studies have shown that such tattoos can last for at least a year and are likely to be permanent, which also makes them a viable beauty option for those who want aesthetic tattoos because they don't want to risk infection or suffer the pain

Microneedle patch tattoos can also be used to encode information

"Our goal is not to replace all tattoos, because tattoos are usually beautiful works created by tattoo artists
," Plausnitz said.
"Our goal is to create new opportunities for patients, pets and people who want painless tattoos to be easily implemented
.
"

Prosnitz co-founded a company called Micron Biomedical, which is developing microneedle patch technology to bring it further into clinical trials, commercialize it, and ultimately make it available
to patients.

Prausnitz and several other Georgia Tech researchers were the inventors of the microneedle patch technology used in the study and owned the property
of Micron Biomedical.
They are entitled to royalties
from research-related products sold by Micron Biomedical in the future.
These potential conflicts of interest have been disclosed and overseen
by Georgia Tech.