Engineering and Development of a Tissue Model for the Evaluation of Microneedle Penetration Ability, Drug Diffusion, Photothermal Activity, and Ultrasound Imaging: A Promising Surrogate to ex vivo and in vivo Tissues.
Giuseppe PeraleMajid ShabaniNavid RabieeQonita Kurnia AnjaniAziz MalekiEhsan Nazarzade ZareAkmal Hidayat Bin SabriDaniele De PasqualeMaria KoskinopoulouEsmaeel SharifiRossella SartoriusMohammad SeyedhamzehShayesteh BochaniIkue HirataAna Cláudia Paiva-SantosLeonardo S MattosRyan DonnellyVirgilio MattoliPublished in: Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) (2023)
Driven by regulatory authorities and the ever-growing demands from industry, various artificial tissue models have been developed. Nevertheless, there is no model to date that is capable of mimicking the biomechanical properties of the skin whilst exhibiting the hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity properties of the skin layers. As a proof-of-concept study, Makvandi and colleagues fabricated tissue surrogates based on gel and silicone for evaluation of microneedle penetration, drug diffusion, photothermal activity, and ultrasound bioimaging. The silicone layer aims to imitate the stratum corneum while the gel layer aims to mimic water-rich viable epidermis and dermis present in vivo tissues. We assessed the diffusion of drugs across the tissue model, and the results revealed that our proposed tissue model showed similar behavior to a cancerous kidney. In place of typical in vitro aqueous solutions, this model can also be employed for evaluating the photoactivity of a photothermal agent (e.g., polydopamine) since the tissue model showed a similar heating profile to mice skin when irradiated with near-infrared (NIR) laser. In addition, the designed tissue model exhibited promising results for biomedical applications in optical coherence tomography and ultrasound imaging. Such a tissue model paves the way to reduce the use of animals testing in research whilst obviating ethical concerns. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Keyphrases
- photodynamic therapy
- gene expression
- magnetic resonance imaging
- drug delivery
- optical coherence tomography
- type diabetes
- computed tomography
- drug release
- wound healing
- soft tissue
- metabolic syndrome
- skeletal muscle
- high resolution
- insulin resistance
- single molecule
- diabetic retinopathy
- fluorescent probe
- finite element analysis