The Rise of Polymeric Microneedles: Recent Developments, Advances,
Challenges, and Applications for Transdermal Drug Delivery
Abstract
The current scenario for the quest of microneedles (MNs) about the
property of biodegradability and biocompatibility is the thrust area of
interest. Microneedles are considered to be robust and can penetrate
into the skin’s innermost layers are easy to manufacture and their
applications in the clinical perspectives are still ongoing and
ever-increasing day by day. This review paper clearly focuses upon some
of the pivotal variants of polymeric microneedles namely the dissolvable
and swelling-based MNs. It further explores into the drug dissolution
kinetics, insertion behavior mechanisms with an emphasis on the need for
mathematical modeling of MN. This review further evaluates on the
fabrication methods with updates the advances in the fabrication of
polymeric MNs, the choice of materials used for fabrication, the
challenges in polymeric MN fabrication, the prospects of polymeric MNs
with its applications in healthcare by exclusively focusing on the
available literature over the erstwhile decade.