Design of scalable manufacturing process for the production of biodegradable polymeric microneedles for protein transdermal drug delivery

Abstract

Introduction. Dissolving polymeric microneedles are attractive drug delivery system especially for vaccine delivery. Still there are a lot of obstacles in developing scalable manufacturing process of them.Aim. To develop a scalable manufacturing process for producing polymeric dissolving microneedles, which can enable keeping protein activity during manufacturing process.Materials and methods. Microneedles were produced from aqua solution of 20 % w.v. pullulan and 3 % w.v. polyvinyl alcohol by casting in hollow negative polyethylene terephthalate mold. Human serum albumin was chosen as a model protein for this investigation.Results and discussion. There were chosen the mode of mold filling and microneedle drying process, which can guarantee keeping of protein activity during manufacturing process.Conclusion. The designed technology can be easily scaled up and used for producing vaccine drug delivery systems, because it doesn’t contain any restraining processes.

Keywords

• polymeric microneedles
• dissolving microneedles
• microneedle patch
• drug delivery
• protein delivery
• manufacturing process
• human serum albumin