Development of Implants for Prolonged Drug delivery

Abstract

Despite being a popular and convenient route of drug delivery, the oral route has a number of disadvantages. Polymeric sub-dermal implants offer an alternative delivery route that may circumvent many of these challenges. In this study, implants were designed using computer-aided design (CAD) software and fabricated using3D printing. The impact of implant design on the rate of drug release was investigated using methylene blue as a model. It was found that drug release could be extended from 2 days to over 40 days as a result of changing implant design. Future work will focus on optimisation of implant design with the aim of producing degrading polymeric rate‑controlling membranes to further control drug release and to conduct further invitro investigation with a drug compound.

Keywords

• drug-delivery
• sub-dermal
• implant
• biodegradable