Fabrication of Dissolvable Microneedle Patches

Term: 
2018-2019 Summer
Faculty Department of Project Supervisor: 
Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences
Number of Students: 
2

The greatest challenge in transdermal drug delivery is the passage of the outer layer of the skin (stratum corneum). Without physical violation or chemical penetration enhancers, stratum corneum allows only small molecules (<500 Da) to penetrate the skin, thereby imposing significant limitations on the type of therapeutic that can be applied directly, preventing the use of the skin path for many biologics without the use of specially designed delivery systems and delivery enhancers.To overcome this issue, micro-needle arrays (MNA) have been developed to physically perforate the upper layer of the skin to effectively efficiently deliver the biologics. 
Compared to the traditional methods, (dissolvable) MNAs offers various advantages:
- painless and bloodless delivery of bilogics
- can be applied locally
- do not require a trained personal for application
-  cannot be used repeatedly; thus elimiates the risk of infectious diseases
- the desired immunological response can be generated with very small doses of the drug (thus, the side effects of the drug can be minimized)
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In this project, students will 
1) design the individual microneedle geometry and array geometry
2) construct a fast manufacturing processs to fabricate the master molds and production molds with high geometric accuracy
3) prepare different biodissolvable hydrogels to fabriate dissolvable microneedle patches
4) investigate/compare the piercing and dissolution characteristics of various microneedle patches 

Related Areas of Project: 
Materials Science ve Nano Engineering
Mechatronics Engineering