KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – Researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City have found a way to use a beam of light instead of needles to inject insulin.

They wrote about the advance for the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie. The researchers with UMKC’s School of Pharmacy call the new insulin administration method photoactivated depot.

It allows insulin to be linked to something called an insoluble polymer by a connection that can be broken with light. The school says in a news release that insulin can then be released from the polymer by light irradiation through the skin.

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