Yeong Chae Ryu, Dong In Kim, Seung Hoon Kim, Hui-Min David Wang, and Byeong Hee Hwang

​Yeong Chae Ryu, Dong In Kim, Seung Hoon Kim, Byeong Hee Hwang*
Division of Bioengineering, Incheon National University, Incheon 22012, Korea
Tel: +82-32-835-8834; Fax: +82-32-835-2699; E-mail: bhwang@inu.ac.kr
Hui-Min David Wang
Graduate Institute of Biomedical Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan

Received: 1 March 2018 / Revised: 30 April 2018 / Accepted: 1 May 2018
© The Korean Society for Biotechnology and Bioengineering and Springer 2018

​Abstract

Transdermal drug delivery systems have been studied as an attractive alternative to conventional delivery routes. However, the outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum, acts as a primary barrier to drug delivery. A synergistic combination of microneedles (MNs) and low-frequency ultrasound (U) was used to enhance the penetration of siRNA and ovalbumin. The specific gene knockdown caused by siRNAs through the RNA interference pathway is more stable when delivered via the transdermal route. Ovalbumin, a representative adjuvant, causes a more efficient immune response in the skin because of the numerous immune cells in the skin. The synergistic transdermal delivery resulted in approximately 7 times and 15 times greater penetration of siRNA and ovalbumin respectively than in their respective negative controls, and histological analysis showed minimal invasion. Thus, as the synergistic transdermal delivery enhanced the penetration of biomacromolecules into the skin, this technique is expected to yield a promising technology for a transdermal drug delivery system.

Keywords

transdermal delivery, siRNA, ovalbumin, microneedle, ultrasound