The Digester

Researchers at The Jackson Laboratory and MIT report a microneedle skin patch that painlessly detects inflammation in minutes and samples key immune cells within hours, offering a noninvasive complement to blood tests and biopsies for studying immune responses.

The bandage-like microneedle patch detects inflammatory signals within minutes and can collect immune cells within hours without blood draws or biopsies.
The device harnesses resident memory T cells to recruit antigen-specific immune cells into the skin for sampling.
In mouse vaccination models the patch boosted recovery of antigen-specific T cells, and an initial human test recovered live immune cells and signaling proteins.
The study appears in Nature Biomedical Engineering and was developed by The Jackson Laboratory with collaborators at MIT and UMass Chan.
Potential uses include tracking skin autoimmune diseases, age-related inflammation, vaccine and infection responses, and monitoring cancer therapy effects.
Blood tests and biopsies will still be needed and further validation across diseases and populations is required, and MIT has filed a patent related to the work.

Painless microneedle patch samples immune cells from skin to monitor inflammation

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