Introduction: Despite their effectiveness and indispensability, many drugs are poorly solvated in aqueous solutions. Over recent decades, the need for targeted drug delivery has led to the development of pharmaceutical formulations with enhanced lipid solubility to improve their delivery properties. Therefore, a dependable approach for administering lipid-soluble drugs needs to be developed.
Areas covered: The advent of 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized the development of medical devices, which can effectively enable the delivery of lipophilic drugs to the targeted tissues. This review focuses on the use of microneedles and iontophoresis for transdermal drug delivery. Microneedle arrays, inkjet printing, and fused deposition modeling have emerged as valuable approaches for delivering several classes of drugs. In addition, iontophoresis has been successfully employed for the effective delivery of macromolecular drugs.
Expert opinion: Microneedle arrays, inkjet printing, and fused deposition are potentially useful for many drug delivery applications; however, the clinical and commercial adoption rates of these technologies are relatively low. Additional efforts is needed to enable the pharmaceutical community to fully realize the benefits of these technologies.
Keywords: 3D printing; Additive manufacturing; drug delivery; hollow microneedles; inkjet printing; iontophoresis; water-insoluble drugs.