Transdermal Drug Delivery with Permeation Enhancer

A. Kermani [1], N. Elabbasi [1]
[1] Veryst Engineering, Needham, MA, USA
Published in 2016

Transdermal drug delivery (TDD) is used to deliver drugs through the skin as an alternative to oral, intravascular, and subcutaneous routes. While there are many advantages to TDD, skin is a very effective barrier and provides resistance to drug delivery. To improve drug delivery through the skin, permeation enhancers are used. We developed an axisymmetric COMSOL Multiphysics® software model of drug diffusion from an adhesive patch to skin. We captured the effect of the enhancer by assuming that diffusivity of the drug in the skin increases linearly with concentration of the enhancer. We validated our simulation by comparing with experimental measurements, in which the drug is fentanyl and the enhancer is lauryl pyroglutamate.