Enhancement of transdermal delivery of resveratrol using Eudragit and polyvinyl pyrrolidone-based dissolving microneedle patches

Abstract

Resveratrol is a natural phenol, which has lipophilic properties. Despite the interest of the pharmacological effects of resveratrol, its low bioavailability and poor solubility limit its use in pharmaceutical and cosmetic formulations. Microneedles (MNs) technology is a promising transdermal delivery platform because of its minimally invasive, painless, convenient, and improved drug delivery. The aim of this study was to develop resveratrol-loaded dissolving microneedles (DMNs) based on Eudragit E100, Eudragit RS100, and polyvinyl pyrrolidone-K90 (PVP-K90) polymers to improve the transdermal delivery of resveratrol. Eudragit E100/PVP-K90 DMNs and Eudragit RS100/PVP-K90 DMNs incorporating 5% of resveratrol were fabricated by a micromolding technique. The fabricated DMNs showed the refined appearance of the patches (121 needles per patch), which had an adequate mechanical strength to resist the application force of a 13.31 N per patch for 30 s. All needles were completely dissolved within 30 min in vitro. A skin permeation study found that the cumulative amount of resveratrol delivered at 24 h using Eudragit RS100/PVP-K90 DMN patches and Eudragit E100/PVP-K90 DMN patches were approximately 3.4 and 3.8 folds higher than that of the gel formulation, respectively (p < 0.05). The stability results suggested that resveratrol was highly stable in all DMNs formulations at 25 °C during the period of 4 weeks. Therefore, the researchers finding suggested that DMN patches fabricated from Eudragit RS100/PVP-K90 and Eudragit E100/PVP-K90 could be a beneficial drug delivery platform, which could improve the treatment of hypopigmentation by resveratrol.