There is good news for those who have a fear of needles. A team of researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas developed a system of powdered vaccines that deliver life-saving medication through the skin with gentle pressure. Scientists claim it is virtually painless – that it feels like being “hit by a Nerf bullet.”

According to Study Finds, the “MOF-Jet” delivers powdered vaccines into a patient’s cells by shooting them through the skin with air. The new system does not require refrigeration or compressed gas, as previous similar systems did. It combines the technology of traditional jet injectors that used compressed gas to inject a narrow stream of fluid with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to create a “MOF-Jet” that could hold a variety of material, including nucleic acids and proteins.

The researchers presented their findings at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society. Graduate student Yalina Wijesundara created the prototype, explaining “we can store vaccine formulations within it as powders at room temperature, which eliminates the need for the extremely cold temperatures than many liquid vaccines require,” she said in a news release.

Wijesundara discovered that the MOF-Jet technique works differently by changing the injector’s carrier gas. “If you shoot it with carbon dioxide, it will release its cargo faster within cells,” she said. “If you use regular air, it will take four or five days.”  This means that the same drug could be released over different timescales without changing its formulation, opening up the doors to many possibilities.

The team of researchers is now using this method to deliver chemotherapeutics and adjuvants as a potential treatment for melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer. They say that because the MOF-Jet can disperse material over a wide area, it could distribute a cancer therapeutic into a melanoma more evenly than with a needle, which is the current delivery method.

Eventually the MOF-Jet could provide treatment in a wide variety of applications, from veterinary medicine to human vaccinations.