Skin-on-a-Chip Technology for Testing Transdermal Drug Delivery—Starting Points and Recent Developments

Abstract

During the last decades, several technologies were developed for testing drug delivery through the dermal barrier. Investigation of drug penetration across the skin can be important in topical pharmaceutical formulations and also in cosmeto-science. The state-of- the-art in the field of skin diffusion measurements, different devices, and diffusion platforms used, are summarized in the introductory part of this review. Then the methodologies applied at Pázmány Péter Catholic University are shown in detail. The main testing platforms (Franz diffusion cells, skin-on-a-chip devices) and the major scientific projects (P-glycoprotein interaction in the skin; new skin equivalents for diffusion purposes) are also presented in one section. The main achievements of our research are briefly summarized: (1) new skin-on-a-chip microfluidic devices were validated as tools for drug penetration studies for the skin; (2) P-glycoprotein transport has an absorptive orientation in the skin; (3) skin samples cannot be used for transporter interaction studies after freezing and thawing; (4) penetration of hydrophilic model drugs is lower in aged than in young skin; (5) mechanical sensitization is needed for excised rodent and pig skins for drug absorption measurements. Our validated skin-on-a-chip platform is available for other research groups to use for testing and for utilizing it for different purposes.

Keywords

• topical drug diffusion
• skin-on-a-chip
• microfluidics
• Franz diffusion cells
• skin equivalents
• drug delivery