Toronto ? Hypodermic needles — a child’s worst nightmare, a necessity for diabetics and an everyday tool of medicine for 150 years — could be history within several years if researchers from the University of Toronto have their way.

Two chemists, Geoffrey Ozin and Kai Landskron, say they have created an unusual material using man-made molecules called dendrimers. They believe the material can store drugs, and, when spread on the skin as a film, allow them to dissipate into a patient’s bloodstream like a new type of patch.

Unlike patches currently sold in drug stores, the scientists believe that their material can deliver smaller amounts of drugs over a longer period of time.

The researchers won’t say when the new patch might hit the market. Before getting to testing, which itself could take a few years, they must produce enough of it for experimenting and overcome the price tag of the key ingredient, dendrimers, which are complex and difficult to produce.

“They’re difficult to obtain and last time we (purchased them) they cost us $128,000 per kilogram!” said Dr. James Baker, head of the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan.

Landskron and Ozin aren’t alone in their type of research, but they’re ahead of the pack. Baker said their innovation was something “a lot of us would like to work with.”