Engineering Research Center of Ministry of Education for Geological Carbon Storage and Low Carbon Utilization of Resources, Beijing Key Laboratory of Materials Utilization of Nonmetallic Minerals and Solid Wastes, National Laboratory of Mineral Materials, School of Materials Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing 100083, People's Republic of China.
Department of Pain, The First Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, People's Republic of China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024 Sep 18;16(37):49069-49082. doi: 10.1021/acsami.4c10049. Epub 2024 Sep 5.
Transdermal drug delivery systems are highly appealing as a convenient drug delivery manner applicable to a wide variety of drugs. While most delivery relies on only passive diffusion and suffers low transdermal efficiencies. Ultrasound motivation promotes drug transdermal penetration but still calls for improvement, because only a thin proportion of the ultrasound energy is applied on the drug delivery patch and most ultrasound energy is wasted in deeper portions of biotissues. In this work, we develop a transdermal patch for enhanced drug delivery. The combination of microsized air pockets and the piezoelectric soft structure enable the conversion of an intended proportion of ultrasound energy into electric energy. The intensified drug flow and synergistic ultrasound pressure and electric field function simultaneously to enhance drug transdermal delivery. The delivery efficacy is related to the power of the ultrasound motivation, the size of the microscopic air pockets, and the chemical structure of the drug molecules. The temperature of the patch within the delivery process remains in the safe range, and the mild temperature elevation causes color changes of the thermochromic patch, used to indicate effective ultrasound-patch matching. A model delivery patch for pain release is constructed, and animal experiments indicate that the drug blood concentrations are 100% higher than the delivery using only ultrasound and even more remarkably enhanced when compared to only electric-field-motivated delivery or static delivery without external motivations.
透皮给药系统作为一种方便的药物给药方式，适用于多种药物，具有很大的吸引力。虽然大多数给药方式仅依赖于被动扩散，但透皮效率较低。超声激励可以促进药物透皮渗透，但仍需要改进，因为只有一小部分超声能量应用于药物输送贴剂上，大部分超声能量在生物组织的深部浪费。在这项工作中，我们开发了一种用于增强药物输送的透皮贴剂。微空气口袋和压电软结构的组合使预期比例的超声能量转化为电能成为可能。强化的药物流动和协同的超声压力和电场功能同时增强药物透皮输送。输送效果与超声激励的功率、微观空气口袋的大小以及药物分子的化学结构有关。在输送过程中，贴片的温度保持在安全范围内，温和的温度升高会导致热敏贴片的颜色变化，用于指示有效的超声贴片匹配。构建了一个用于缓解疼痛的模型输送贴片，动物实验表明，药物的血液浓度比仅使用超声的输送高 100%，甚至比仅电场激励输送或没有外部激励的静态输送更显著地增强。
