Thermal Ablation for Transdermal Drug Delivery

Skin makes an excellent site for drug delivery due to easy accessibility, immuno-surveillance functions, avoidance of degradation in the gastrointestinal tract and possibility of self administration. However, macromolecular drug delivery across the skin is primarily accomplished using hypodermic needles, which have several disadvantages like accidental needle-sticks, pain and needle phobia. These limitations have led to extensive research and development of alternative methods for drug delivery across the human skin. This review specially focuses on the recent developments in the field of thermal ablation micro-scale devices for transdermal drug delivery. It is complexity of implementation of this type permeation methods into devices that makes task challenging. In addition to the complexity of device fabrication and integration, issues related to maximizing delivery efficiency while minimizing undesirable reactions require significant research and development efforts.