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Drug Delivery across Barriers to the Middle and Inner Ear
Zipei Zhang1, Xiyu Li1, Wei Zhang1
1Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery, Department of Anesthesiology, Division of Critical Care Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Abstract:
The prevalence of ear disorders has spurred efforts to develop drug delivery systems to treat these conditions. Here, recent advances in drug delivery systems that access the ear through the tympanic membrane (TM) are reviewed. Such methods are either non-invasive (placed on the surface of the TM), or invasive (placed in the middle ear, ideally on the round window [RW]). The major hurdles to otic drug delivery are identified and highlighted the representative examples of drug delivery systems used for drug delivery across the TM to the middle and (crossing the RW also) inner ear.
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