Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 24, 2025

Visualizing and Quantifying Pharmaceutical Compounds within Skin using Coherent Raman Scattering Imaging
Published on: November 24, 2021
Drug delivery to and through the skin
1Department of Life Sciences, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, U.K.. r.h.guy@bath.ac.uk.
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Drug delivery technology has advanced significantly over >50 years, and has produced remarkable innovation, countless publications and conferences, and generations of talented and creative scientists. However, a critical review of the current state-of-the-art reveals that the translation of clever and sophisticated drug delivery technologies into products, which satisfy important, unmet medical needs and have been approved by the regulatory agencies, has - given the investment made in terms of time and money - been relatively limited. Here, this point of view is illustrated using a case study of technology for drug delivery into and through the skin and aims: to examine the historical development of this field and the current state-of-the-art; to understand why the translation of drug delivery technologies into products that improve clinical outcomes has been quite slow and inefficient; and to suggest how the impact of technology may be increased and the process of concept to approved product accelerated.
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