Advanced Silk Fibroin Biomaterials-Based Microneedles for Healthcare.

Microneedles are a promising transdermal drug delivery system that has the advantages of minimal invasiveness, painlessness, and on-demand drug delivery compared with commonly used medical techniques. Natural resources are developed as next-generation materials for microneedles with varying degrees of success. Among them, silk fibroin is a natural polymer obtained from silkworms with good biocompatibility, high hardness, and controllable biodegradability. These properties provide many opportunities for integrating silk fibroin with implantable microneedle systems. In this review, we summarized the research progress of silk fibroin microneedles in recent years, including their materials, processing technology, detection, drug release methods, and applications. Besides, the research and development of silk fibroin in a multidimensional way are analyzed. Finally, we expect that silk fibroin microneedles will have excellent development prospects in various fields (Figure 1). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.