Optimization of transdermal delivery using magainin pore-forming peptide

The skin's outer layer of stratum corneum, which is a thin tissue containing multilamellar lipid bilayers, is the main barrier to drug delivery to the skin. To increase skin permeability, our previous work has shown large enhancement of transdermal permeation using a pore-forming peptide, magainin, which was formulated with N-lauroyl sarcosine (NLS) in 50% ethanol-in-PBS. Mechanistic analysis suggested that magainin and NLS can increase skin permeability by disrupting stratum corneum lipid structure. In this study, our goal was to improve conditions that increase skin permeability by magainin by further optimizing the pretreatment time and concentration of magainin exposure. We found that skin permeability increased with increasing pretreatment time. Skin permeability also increased with increasing magainin concentration up to 1 mM, but was reduced at a magainin concentration of 2 mM. Enhancement of skin permeability to fluorescein (323 Da) up to 35-fold was observed. In contrast, this formulation did not enhance skin permeability to larger molecules, such as calcein (623 Da) and dextran (3,000 Da).