A novel needle-free microjet drug injector using Er:YAG LASER: A completely new concept of transdermal drug delivery system

Abstract

The skin barrier effectively inhibits the penetration of substances; therefore, drug delivery, especially the delivery of drugs that are hydrophilic, through the skin, is challenging. Objectives: Physicians in the esthetic field now use the transdermal drug delivery system to attempt to deliver esthetic materials, such as hyaluronic acid and poly-DL-lactic acid into the skin. Conventionally, esthetic physicians manually injected these materials using needle syringes into the dermis layer. However, the injection is often irregular, imprecise, slow, and painful. Injector devices have been developed to overcome these limitations. A total of five Korean cadavers (that of three men and two women with a mean age of 69.2 years; range, 60-73 years) underwent laser injection. We used a device called Er:YAG LASER to create the pressure needed for microjet delivery to the skin of the cadaver. Discussion: In this study, the first LASER pressure-based, needle-free microjet injector was used to deliver drugs effectively into the dermis of a cadaver. This study showed that a novel needle-free microjet injector using Er:YAG LASER can introduce beneficial, liquid, esthetic drugs into the papillary dermal layer (depth of 300um) with minimal epidermal damage.