Additive manufacturing advancements contribute considerably to several fields and its use in the medical field is gaining attention due to its easily customizable option (patient-specific), low cost, and fast turnout time in developing drug delivery and diagnostic tools. Herein, the fabrication of a microneedle (MN) platform is reported using a stereolithography 3D printer, varying the 3D printing angle and aspect ratio (2:1, 3:1, and 4:1). The optimal printing angle is 30°, resulting in needle tip and base diameters of ≈50 and ≈330 μm and heights of ≈550/850/1180 μm. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) MNs produced with varying levofloxacin concentrations show variability of ≈4% in tip and 3% base diameters and 15% in height compared to the 3D-printed MNs. Geometry B is used to produce levofloxacin-loaded PVA MNs and tested against Klebsiella pneumoniae colony biofilms. Levofloxacin is released gradually, as assessed by spectrofluorimetry. The minimum inhibitory concentration of levofloxacin against the K. pneumoniae clinical isolate is 4 μg mL −1 but this concentration is insufficient to cause any effect on K. pneumoniae biofilms. Only concentrations ≥32 μg mL −1 are statistically different compared to the unloaded MNs. 3D printing is an attractive solution to produce molds for fabricating biopolymeric MNs for topical drug delivery.
IntroductionThe skin has been a lucrative target for drug delivery and diagnosis in medicine. Since the skin is the largest organ in the body,
In this article, we present the design, fabrication and characterization of a microfluidic device and a dedicated electronic system to perform 8 multiplexed electrochemical measurements of synthetic miRNA strands, as well as the biochemical protocols developed for the functionalization of the electrodes and the quantification experiments. The outcomes of this work highlight that the parallelization of eight microchannels containing 2-electrode cells driven by the dedicated electronics offers a solution as robust as a conventional 3-electrode cell and commercially available potentiostats. In addition, this solution presents the advantage of simultaneously reduce the microfabrication complexity, as well as offering an integrated; multiplexed and portable system for the quantification of miRNA. The results presented demonstrate that the system shows a linear response on concentrations down to 10−18 mol/L of perfect matched reporter and capture sequences of synthetic miRNA
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.