Abstract
The interest in safe and efficient transdermal drug delivery systems has been increasing in recent decades. In light of that, polymeric dissolving microneedles (DMNs) were developed as an ideal platform capable of delivering micro- and macro-biomolecules across the skin in a minimally invasive manner. A vast majority of studies, however, suggest that the shape of DMNs, as well as the elastic properties of skin, affects the delivery efficiency of materials encapsulated within DMNs. Likewise, in dynamic tissues, DMNs would easily distend from the skin, leading to inefficient delivery of encapsulated agents. Thus, herein, to improve delivery efficiency of DMN encapsulated agents, a novel hyaluronic acid backbone-based tissue interlocking DMN (TI-DMN) is developed. TI-DMN is simple to fabricate and significantly improves the transdermal delivery efficiency of encapsulated materials compared with traditional DMNs. The enhanced tissue interlocking feature of TI-DMN is achieved through its sharp tip, wide body, and narrow neck geometry. This paper demonstrates that TI-DMN would serve as an attractive transdermal delivery platform to enhance penetration and delivery efficiency of a wide range of biomolecules into the body.
Highlights
dissolving microneedles (DMNs) would overcome most of the limitations associated with conventional transdermal delivery, recent findings suggest that because of the elastic and stiffness properties of the skin[23], DMNs require secondary supporting structures, applicator systems and, enhancers to achieve an accurate delivery[24,25,26,27,28]
Through a series of in vitro and in vivo evaluations, we systematically demonstrate that tissue interlocking DMN (TI-DMN) accurately delivers the encapsulated drugs to the body, strongly interlocks within the dynamic tissues, and significantly improves the efficiency of delivered compounds compared to conventional DMNs
The second hyaluronic acid (HA) polymer drop is dispensed on top of the primary layer followed by additional centrifugation, resulting in a TI-DMN with a narrow neck, wide body, and sharp tip (Fig. 1A)
Summary
DMNs would overcome most of the limitations associated with conventional transdermal delivery, recent findings suggest that because of the elastic and stiffness properties of the skin[23], DMNs require secondary supporting structures, applicator systems and, enhancers to achieve an accurate delivery[24,25,26,27,28]. An optimized DMN platform that is both simple to fabricate and would effectively deliver the encapsulated compounds is required to overcome the obstacles of the current transdermal delivery systems. Through a series of in vitro and in vivo evaluations, we systematically demonstrate that TI-DMN accurately delivers the encapsulated drugs to the body, strongly interlocks within the dynamic tissues, and significantly improves the efficiency of delivered compounds compared to conventional DMNs
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