Fabrication of whole-dissolvable microneedles patch in large area for transdermal drug delivery

抄録

Microneedles (MNs) that penetrate skin surface to administer drugs in minimally invasive manner, have been focused and developed in recent years. In this research, a fabrication method for whole-dissolvable MNs patch in large area is investigated. A stamping and drawing method with a 3D-printed hydrophilic polymer stamp is proposed to manufacture MNs patch in large area simply and rapidly. Firstly, the Poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) stamps were designed as an array of 81 pillars (diameter: 1mm) on the plate (5.76 cm2) and formed in a few minutes by 3D printing. Hyaluronic acid (HA, 15 wt%), a biodegradable polymer that can solidify at room temperature was utilized as matrix material to fabricate dissolvable microneedles. Rhodamine B (0.15 wt%), a fluorescent dye was used as model drug. The substrate material was Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) that is water-soluble and can be dissolved with a few drops of water and thus, there is no need to peel off the patch after MNs patch application. The large size MNs patch (25cm2) with drug-loaded was manufactured by repeating the stamping process by 4 times. The results show that the height of MNs was 576 ± 92 μm and the tip diameter was 38 ± 17 μm, respectively that met the requirement of painless transdermal drug delivery. The model drug distributed uniformly in the microneedle measured by confocal fluorescent microscope.