Microfluidic strategy for the controlled synthesis of sub-50 nm sized transfersomes as a drug carrier for transdermal barrier
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초록
내용
We propose a new synthesis technique for transfersomes, a type of liposome specialized for transdermal drug delivery, based on a 3-dimensional microfluidic system. A complex microstructure of the feature size as small as 300 μm was realized by utilizing a masked stereolithography 3D printer. Transfersomes consists of lipids and edge activators, which is more commonly perceived as amphiphilic molecules, to render lipid bilayer membrane more flexible and to allow high skin permeability. Size of transfersome is another major factor to its permeability, however, current synthesis techniques often lack in size controllability at below 100 nm scale. In this study, the impacts of the size of transfersomes and the type of edge activators to the transdermal delivery rate were studied using both hydrophilic and hydrophobic model drugs. The resulting device successfully demonstrated the synthesis of transfersomes ranging from 28 nm to over 100 nm in diameter by adjusting operating conditions such as flow rate ratio.