| 초록 |
With increasing clinical needs for painless and easy administration of therapeutic drugs through a transdermal route, microneedles (MNs) have been extensively exploited as a new technique for facilitating percutaneous drug delivery in a minimally invasive manner. However, a precise control of dose and the risk of secondary bacterial infection via punctured holes by MNs have remained unsolved. Here we report a bullet-shaped, swellable MNs prepared by crosslinked biopolymers, enabling shear-induced implantation inside skin following distal swelling of MN tips by absorbing body fluids. The embeddable MN patch was prepared by a solvent-casting with a mold and the swellable tip height of MNs to be embedded was controlled by the concentration of polymer solutions. The swellable MNs of 80~90% were embedded into the skin and the embedded swollen MNs offered a superior barrier function by tight sealing of punctured holes. Drug-loaded embeddable MNs were investigated for promoting hair growth. |
