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Performance studies of particle acceleration for transdermal drug delivery

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Abstract

We have proposed a transdermal biolistic method to accelerate a powder formulation of drugs to penetrate human skin for the treatment of a range of diseases. One of the key issues for designing and evaluating transdermal biolistic system is ensuing that the powder drugs are delivered into the skin with a controllable velocity range and spatial distribution. The aerodynamics of supersonic nozzles and performance of the delivery system were initially studied, mainly analytically and experimentally. In this paper, computational fluid dynamics is utilized to characterize two existing prototype devices, in order to further investigate the transient gas and particle dynamics in their supersonic nozzles. To validate the implemented numerical approach, calculated pressure histories, two-dimensional flow structures and particle velocity distributions are made and compared with the reported experimental measurements. The key features of gas dynamics, gas–particle interaction and performance of the prototype transdermal biolistics are discussed and interpreted.

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Acknowledgements

This collaborative research was supported by Chiron Vaccines and former PowderJect Pharmaceuticals plc. Fruitful discussions with Professor Brian J. Bellhouse, Professor Mark A.F. Kendall and Dr. George Costigan are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Southern Yangtze University, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China

    Yi Liu

  2. Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX2 6PE, UK

    Yi Liu

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  1. Yi Liu
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Correspondence to Yi Liu.

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Liu, Y. Performance studies of particle acceleration for transdermal drug delivery. Med Bio Eng Comput 44, 551–559 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-006-0050-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-006-0050-4

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