Abstract
ABSTRACTTraditional blood sampling is essential for early diagnosis and subsequent analysis, but the methods using hypodermic needles are painful and burdensome. Recently, a minimally invasive approach utilizing porous microneedles has been developed and various porous microneedle array patches (MAPs) composed of biodegradable polymers have been investigated. To address issues about low mechanical strength and liquid absorption with porous MAPs, we used polyglycolic acid (PGA) as it is a biodegradable and hydrophilic polymer with high mechanical properties. In this study, we established a nonsolvent‐induced phase separation (NIPS) method for the fabrication of PGA porous MAPs, as the porous MAPs can be fabricated by simply immersing the molds injected with PGA‐hexafluoro‐2‐propanol (HFIP) solution in nonsolvents. We achieved the maximum liquid absorption rate of 16 ± 8.2 × 10−2 µL/min per one microneedle using the PGA porous MAPs fabricated by using ethanol as nonsolvent and PGA concentration of 10% (w/w). Our study provides a comprehensive understanding of porous MAPs fabricated using PGA material as well as its characteristics regarding the structural and mechanical properties of PGA MAPs, with potential as a diagnostic device to substitute conventional hypodermic needles for interstitial fluid (ISF) sampling and diagnosis.
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