Novel Delivery Systems for Transdermal and Intradermal Drug Delivery

Novel Delivery Systems for Transdermal and Intradermal Drug Delivery

This research book covers the major aspects relating to the use of novel delivery systems in enhancing both transdermal and intradermal drug delivery. It provides a review of transdermal and intradermal drug delivery, including the history of the field and the various methods employed to produce delivery systems from different materials such as device design, construction and evaluation, so as to provide a sound background to the use of novel systems in enhanced delivery applications.

Furthermore, it presents in-depth analyses of recent developments in this exponentially growing field, with a focus on microneedle arrays, needle-free injections, nanoparticulate systems and peptide-carrier-type systems. It also covers conventional physical enhancement strategies, such as tape-stripping, sonophoresis, iontophoresis, electroporation and thermal/suction/laser ablation Discussions about the penetration of the stratum corneum by the various novel strategies highlight the importance of the application method. Comprehensive and critical reviews of transdermal and intradermal delivery research using such systems focus on the outcomes of in vivo animal and human studies. The book includes laboratory, clinical and commercial case studies featuring safety and patient acceptability studies carried out to date, and depicts a growing area for use of these novel systems is in intradermal vaccine delivery. The final chapters review recent patents in this field and describe the work ongoing in industry.

Dr Ryan Donnelly is Reader in Pharmaceutics at Queen's University Belfast. Dr Donnelly's research is centred on design and physicochemical characterisation of advanced polymeric drug delivery systems for transdermal and topical drug delivery, with a strong emphasis on improving therapeutic outcomes for patients. He is also a technical director at Swedish Pharma AB. Still at a relatively early stage of his career, he has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications, including 3 patent applications, 3 textbooks, 16 book chapters and approximately 100 full papers. He’s the holder of many awards including the current GSK Emerging Scientist Award.

Dr Raj Thakur is Lecturer in Pharmaceutics at Queen's University Belfast. He obtained his PhD in polymer science in 2009 from Queens University Belfast and his MSc in drug delivery in 2006 from University Science Malaysia. He has a BSc in Pharmacy from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, India. Dr Thakur's research interests are in development and evaluation of novel in situ forming controlled release implants and ocular and transdermal drug delivery using novel minimally-invasive devices. He has published a textbook and over 30 scientific papers.