Advances in the Application of Microneedles in the Treatment of Local Organ Diseases

Abstract

In recent years, microneedles (MNs) have attracted a lot of attention due to their microscale sizes and high surface area (500–1000 µm in length), allowing pain‐free and efficient drug delivery through the skin. In addition to the great success of MNs based transdermal drug delivery, especially for skin diseases, increasing studies have indicated the expansion of MNs to diverse nontransdermal applications, including the delivery of therapeutics for hair loss, ocular diseases, and oral mucosal. Here, the current treatment of hair loss, eye diseases, and oral disease is discussed and an overview of recent advances in the application of MNs is provided for these three noncutaneous localized organ diseases. Particular emphasis is laid on the future trend of MNs technology development and future challenges of expanding the generalizability of MNs.

3D Printing of Biodegradable Polymeric Microneedles for Transdermal Drug Delivery Applications

“…With the increase in the demand for healthcare applications and services, the market size of medical devices was about $600 billion in 2022 and is estimated to reach above $950 billion by 2031 [ 26 ]. The market share of MNs also has a significant impact on the healthcare and medical industries as it has applications in a wide range of areas [ 4 ] [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. According to a recent report, the market size of global microneedle drug delivery systems was about $2.65 billion in 2021 and about $2.83 billion in the following year [ 30 ].…”