Experimental and modeling studies of drug delivery into tissues using microneedle arrays

Date
2011
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Abstract
Effectively delivering drugs into target tissues or organs of the human body is still a major challenge in medical science. Microneedles, fabricated using microfabrication technology, are being developed as a novel and promising alternative for painless fluid injection or extraction. Over the past few years, various microneedle arrays have been fabricated by employing materials such as silicon, metals, polymers and glass with feature sizes ranging from sub-micron to millimeters. In this research, both experimental and modeling studies are carried out in continuous flow for drug delivery into target tissues using microneedle arrays. The major contributions of this work are as follows: Firstly, there is a need for high precision pumping at low flow rates (0-500 µl/min) for drug delivery using microneedle arrays. We design, simulate, fabricate and test an AC electrothermal (ACET) micropump for fluidic control. For ACET micropumping, microfabricated electrode arrays are used to generate high strength AC electric fields. A coplanar electrode array design can limit the fabrication and operational complexity of the devices. Thus, different fluidic components may be integrated on one substrate, with a minimum of assembly for future applications. Secondly, accurately modeling liquid characteristics of microfuidic devices is difficult, as they exhibit complicated multiphase behaviour. When combined with the requirement for modeling drug delivery into target tissues of the human body using a complex microneedle array, the modeling becomes complicated. For this study, a mathematical model is developed to model and simulate microneedle liquid delivery into tissue by using mixture theory to better understand the working performance of the microneedle array and its interaction with tissue for drug delivery applications. Lastly, experiments with ACET micropumping are carried out to verify the simulation results. The conducted experiments are in good agreement with the simulations providing accurate determination of fluid flow changes with variable parameters and forcing functions.
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Bibliography: p. 104-118
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Citation
Zhang, R. (2011). Experimental and modeling studies of drug delivery into tissues using microneedle arrays (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/4093
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