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Heat: A Highly Efficient Skin Enhancer for Transdermal Drug Delivery
Sabine Szunerits1, Rabah Boukherroub1
1Univ. Lille, CNRS, Centrale Lille, ISEN, Univ. Valenciennes, UMR 8520, IEMN, Lille, France.
Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
|March 3, 2018
Summary
Transdermal drug delivery systems (TDDSs) offer non-invasive, convenient delivery for personalized medicine. Thermal technologies show promise for enhancing TDDSs to deliver macromolecules across the skin barrier.
Area of Science:
- Materials science and bionanotechnology advancements.
- Bioengineering and biotechnology frontiers.
Background:
- Topical formulations target skin diseases; transdermal delivery systems (TDDSs) offer systemic and localized treatment advantages.
- TDDSs are non-invasive, painless, and enable controlled, convenient drug administration, overcoming limitations of oral and intravenous routes.
- Current TDDSs are limited to small, lipophilic drugs, failing to deliver macromolecules due to the stratum corneum's barrier properties.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review advances in thermal technologies for transdermal drug delivery.
- To discuss the potential of thermal approaches to enhance skin permeation for hydrophilic drugs and macromolecules.
- To provide perspective on thermal technologies for local and systemic transdermal drug delivery.
Main Methods:
- Review of current literature on transdermal drug delivery systems.
- Exploration of thermal-based approaches to enhance skin permeation.
- Discussion of iontophoresis and microneedle concepts as alternative permeation enhancement strategies.
Main Results:
- Thermal-based approaches show significant promise for enhancing transdermal drug delivery.
- Overcoming stratum corneum barrier is key for delivering macromolecules and hydrophilic drugs transdermally.
- New procedures are under development to broaden the scope of drugs suitable for TDDS.
Conclusions:
- Thermal technologies represent a promising frontier in bioengineering for advanced transdermal drug delivery.
- Further development of thermal approaches can expand TDDS applications to macromolecules and hydrophilic drugs.
- TDDSs, enhanced by thermal technologies, are poised to advance personalized medicine and point-of-care treatments.
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