Solid-in-Oil Nanodispersion Technique for Transdermal Drug Delivery System of Biopharmaceutical Molecules

Abstract

Biomolecules such as proteins or nucleic acids have been utilized as biopharmaceutical drugs, which produce various pharmacological activities. The development of a novel transdermal delivery system of biopharmaceuticals attracts much attention because it provides the easy and safe administration method compared to injection. The Solid-in-Oil (S/O) nanodispersion technique consists of the oil-based dispersion, in which the biopharmaceuticals are coated with hydrophobic surfactant molecules and dispersed in the oil phase as nanometer-sized particles. Insulin, a model pharmaceutical drug, enables to be dispersed in isopropyl myristate (IPM), that is known to be an effective skin penetration enhancer, by forming the S/O nanodispersion. The permeability of insulin into the skin was drastically enhanced. Further, the transdermal vaccination has been studied as one of the most important applications of the S/O nanodispersion. It was proved that the S/O nanodispersion containig a model antigen produced the antigen-specific antibodies and induced the cytotoxic cellular immunity in mouse. These results suggested that the S/O nanodispersion technique is useful for delivering biopharmaceuticals into the skin, and expected to become available in clinical.