RESEARCH ARTICLE


Modeling of Drug Delivery by A Pump Driven Micro-Needle Array System



Kai Chen1, *, Min Pan1, Zhi-Gang Feng2
1 School of Mechanical Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas, San Antonio, USA


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Creative Commons License
© Chen et al.; Licensee Bentham Open.

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China, 310018; Emails: kchen@hdu.edu.cn, zjnb_yfl@163.com, Zhigang.Feng@utsa.edu


Abstract

Background:

Micro-needles were proposed as one of the alternatives to deliver drugs painlessly passing through stratum corneum in recent years. In this work, a mathematical model is presented to characterize the in fusion flow of a hollow micro-needle array driven by a micro-pump.

Methods:

By assuming the injection of each micro-needle undergoes a spherical expansion and diffusion, the model is able to calculate the time-varying expansion radius, and the diffusion boundary, provided that the material properties and the micro-needle system parameters are known.

Results and Conclusion:

The calculation results show that the expansion caused by the infusion of micro-needles stops and the flow rate drops to zero in a short time. However, the diffusion boundary is much bigger than the expansion and the infusion continues if the surrounding material is absorptive. The experimental results of jet infusion through a single needle in silicon rubber and polyacrylamide gel agree with the calculation results qualitatively.

Keywords: Drug delivery system, fluid infusion, micro-needle, infusion flow.