Microneedle technologies for (trans)dermal drug and vaccine delivery

Microneedles have been used for the dermal and transdermal delivery of a broad range of drugs, such as small molecular weight drugs, oligonucleotides, DNA, peptides, proteins and inactivated viruses. However, until now there are no microneedle-based (trans) dermal drug delivery systems on the market. In the past decade various types of microneedles have been developed by a number of production processes. Numerous geometries of microneedles have been designed from various materials. These microneedles have been used for different approaches of microneedle-based (trans) dermal drug delivery. Following a brief introduction about dermal and transdermal drug delivery, this review describes different production methods for solid and hollow microneedles as well as conditions that influence skin penetration. Besides, the four microneedle-based (trans) dermal drug delivery approaches are discussed: "poke and flow", "poke and patch", "poke and release", and "coat and poke". A separate section of this review is devoted to the use of microneedles for the delivery of therapeutic proteins and vaccines. Finally, we give our view on research and development that is needed to render microneedle-based (trans) dermal drug delivery technologies clinically useful in the near future. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.