Design of water-resistant, food-grade microneedles for fish injection and underwater cargo delivery
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Author(s)
Li, Meng
Raad, Jad
Cao, Yunteng
Hu, Yue
Wolfe, Colleen
Kim, Doyoon
Frank, Bradley
Wiens, Gregory
Marelli, Benedetto
Date Issued
November 2, 2026
Journal
ACS Nano
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Citation
Meng Li, Jad Raad, Yunteng Cao, Yue Hu, Colleen Wolfe, Doyoon Kim, Bradley D. Frank, Gregory D. Wiens, Benedetto Marelli; Design of Water-Resistant, Food-Grade Microneedles for Fish Injection and Underwater Cargo Delivery. ACS Nano 2026.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The aquaculture industry produces around 17% of consumed animal-derived protein but faces significant challenges in disease prevention and excessive use of antimicrobials. Vaccination, particularly for juvenile fish, can mitigate these risks, but manual and automated needle-based vaccination methods are costly, stressful, and labor-intensive. Here, a water-resistant, food-grade microneedle platform is designed to deliver cargos underwater. Silk fibroin-based microneedles are engineered to remain water-resistant from minutes to hours in order to penetrate fish skin in wet conditions. To meet the requirements of different underwater applications, three microneedle morphologies—shell, solid-tip, and hollow—are developed, and their different combinations of mechanical integrity, water-resistance performance, cargo compatibility, and release kinetics are studied. The microneedles also preserve the supercoiled conformation of >50% of the loaded pIHNVw-G plasmids–developed to protect fish against infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus−outside the cold chain for 4 weeks under dry conditions. In pilot animal studies, injected microneedles remain attached to zebrafish and juvenile rainbow trout while swimming. Using this food-based microneedle platform, we envision the development of tools for underwater vaccination of juvenile fish that increase aquaculture efficiencies and reduce environmental impact.
Subjects
microneedles
aquaculture
silk fibroin
shellac
biomaterials
vaccination
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.6c06013
