Dissolving and biodegradable microneedle technologies for transdermal sustained delivery of drug and vaccine

Abstract

Microneedles were first conceptualized for drug delivery many decades ago, overcoming the shortages and preserving the advantages of hypodermic needle and conventional transdermal drug-delivery systems to some extent. Dissolving and biodegradable microneedle technologies have been used for transdermal sustained deliveries of different drugs and vaccines. This review describes microneedle geometry and the representative dissolving and biodegradable microneedle delivery methods via the skin, followed by the fabricating methods. Finally, this review puts forward some perspectives that require further investigation.

Keywords:

• microneedle
• dissolving
• biodegradable
• sustained release

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by the Projects of National Science Foundation of China (81373366, 81071025 and 81171203), and Projects of the Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology, People’s Republic of China (11nm0503300, 11410708900, and 12XD1403800). The authors thank the Analytical Center of Shanghai JiaoTong University for technical support.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.