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DRUG DELIVERY

Slowly dissolving intradermal microneedles

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 3, pages 169–170 (2019)Cite this article

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A patch that deposits an array of microneedle tips under the top layer of the skin enables weeks-long delivery of a contraceptive in rats.

Microneedles below 1 mm in length painlessly penetrate the skin’s stratum corneum without drawing blood, creating pores that facilitate drug delivery. The most common application of microneedles has thus been to enhance the delivery of drugs or vaccines into or across the skin. Since microneedle arrays — which are regular arrangements of micrometre-scale projections on a solid support — were first described in a 1970s patent by ALZA (ref. 1; later acquired by Johnson & Johnson) and first tested in humans about two decades later2, they have been produced in various materials (silicon, metal, glass and polymer), and in a wide range of needle shapes (conical, pyramidal and tubular) and densities (up to 2,000 microneedles per cm2; ref. 3). However, the expense and complexity of producing hollow microneedles, the difficulty of coating them reproducibly, and the potential for the inappropriate reuse of silicon and metal microneedles, has led to dissolving and hydrogel-forming microneedles becoming the most convenient and common options. Dissolving microneedles contain the agent to be delivered in a hydrogel matrix and, following skin insertion, dissolve in skin interstitial fluid. In hydrogel-forming microneedles, the drug is instead contained within an attached drug reservoir, and the microneedles swell in skin interstitial fluid to create a material conduct from the drug reservoir to the viable skin layers. Both dissolving and hydrogel-forming microneedles are self-disabling, in that they either dissolve or become soft after skin insertion, thus preventing reuse. A noted advantage of intradermal vaccine delivery is that the epidermis and dermis of the skin are replete with antigen-presenting cells, and therefore vaccine delivery to the skin can be more expedient than intravenous or intramuscular delivery of the vaccine. In addition, roughly one third of the blood in the human body flows through the skin, and therefore drug absorption by the dermal microcirculation is highly efficient. Moreover, microneedles can be self-administered, obviate needle-stick injuries, and enhance the efficiency of intra- and transdermal delivery of biomolecules3.

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Fig. 1: A microneedle patch for the prolonged delivery of the contraceptive LNG.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Pharmacy, Queens University Belfast, Medical Biology Centre, Belfast, UK

    Ryan F. Donnelly & Eneko Larraňeta

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  1. Ryan F. Donnelly
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  2. Eneko Larraňeta
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Correspondence to Ryan F. Donnelly.

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Competing interests

R.F.D. is an inventor of patents that have been licensed to companies developing microneedle-based products and is a paid advisor to companies developing microneedle-based products. E.L. declares no competing interests.

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Donnelly, R.F., Larraňeta, E. Slowly dissolving intradermal microneedles. Nat Biomed Eng 3, 169–170 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-019-0369-4

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