Fabrication And Evaluation Of Microneedles And Other Enhancement Technologies For Transdermal Delivery Of Anticancer Drugs / By Hiep Xuan Nguyen.

Abstract

Skin (transdermal/topical) delivery offers several advantages over other conventional routes of administration. It helps eliminate first pass metabolism, decrease side effects, enhance patient compliance and decrease frequent dosing. Transdermal delivery has been limited to potent, moderately lipophilic and small molecules. However, the benefits of this route of administration appeal to researchers to expand this limited scope. Multiple physical enhancement techniques have been investigated to increase transdermal drug delivery such as microneedles, laser, electroporation, iontophoresis, and sonophoresis. These methods compromise the barrier function of skin by affecting the skin -stratum corneum and/or epidermis to allow the drug to pass through the treated areas. These approaches facilitate skin delivery of various compounds that includes small molecules, macromolecules, and nano/microparticles. The efficiency of physical enhancement techniques is most useful to deliver hydrophilic large molecules that cannot enter the skin by passive diffusion. In our studies, we used microneedles, fractional ablative laser and ultrasound to treat dermatomed porcine ear and/or cadaver human skin to enhance in vitro transdermal delivery of anticancer drugs, methotrexate, vismodegib, and doxorubicin.