Microneedles in Cancer

Project Synopsis 

Scope: Novel drug delivery, Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics, Toxicology

Regarding the increasing prevalence of cancer throughout the globe, the development of novel alternatives for conventional therapies is inevitable to circumvent limitations such as low efficacy, complications, and high cost (Li et al., 2021; Zhi et al., 2021). Recently, microneedle arrays (MNs) have been introduced as a novel, minimally invasive, and low-cost approach. MNs can deliver both small molecule and macromolecular drugs or even nanoparticles (NPs) to the tumor tissue in a safe and controlled manner (Alimardani et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021). Relying on the recent promising outcomes of MNs in transdermal delivery of anticancer agents, this review is aimed to summarize constituent materials, fabrication methods, advantages, and limitations of different types of MNs used in cancer therapy applications (Lan et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021; Seetharam et al., 2020). All these findings outline the potential use of MNs in transdermal delivery of NPs for effective chemotherapy, gene therapy, immunotherapy, photodynamic, and photothermal therapy (Alimardani et al., 2020; Lan et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021; Seetharam et al., 2020). Currently, the major challenges for cancer immunotherapy are how to improve the response rate and overcome drug resistance (Li et al., 2021; Seetharam et al., 2020). Dermal administration turns out to be a promising route for immunotherapy since the skin is a highly active immune organ containing a large population of resident antigen-presenting cells (Alimardani et al., 2020; Lan et al., 2020). Microneedle arrays can pierce the immune-cell-rich epidermis, leading to a robust T-cell response in the microenvironment of tumor cells (Seetharam et al., 2020). Taken together, microneedle-mediated local delivery of chemotherapeutic and immunotherapeutic agents at tumor skin sites provides a novel treatment strategy and insights into cancer therapy (Alimardani et al., 2020; Lan et al., 2020; Li et al., 2021; Seetharam et al., 2020).