AI Article Synopsis

  • Drug delivery through hair follicles shows promise for both local and systemic treatments, with recent studies highlighting its effectiveness in targeting skin cells and delivering drugs to the bloodstream.
  • Despite its potential, clinical use of follicle-targeting drug carriers is limited due to a lack of comprehensive characterization compared to traditional topical products like ointments and creams.
  • The paper reviews advanced optical and spectroscopic techniques for monitoring drug delivery via hair follicles, focusing on non-invasive methods, and discusses their benefits, drawbacks, and future implications in this research area.

Article Abstract

Drug delivery via hair follicles has attracted much research attention due to its potential to serve for both local and systemic therapeutic purposes. Recent studies on topical application of various particulate formulations have demonstrated a great role of this delivery route for targeting numerous cell populations located in skin and transporting the encapsulated drug molecules to the bloodstream. Despite a great promise of follicle-targeting carriers, their clinical implementation is very rare, mostly because of their poorer characterization compared to conventional topical dosage forms, such as ointments and creams, which have a history spanning over a century. Gathering as complete information as possible on the intrafollicular penetration depth, storage, degradation/metabolization profiles of such carriers and the release kinetics of drugs they contain, as well as their impact on skin health would significantly contribute to understanding the pros and cons of each carrier type and facilitate the selection of the most suitable candidates for clinical trials. Optical imaging and spectroscopic techniques are extensively applied to study dermal penetration of drugs. Current paper provides the state-of-the-art overview of techniques, which are used in optical monitoring of follicular drug delivery, with a special focus on non-invasive in vivo methods. It discusses key features, advantages and limitations of their use, as well as provide expert perspectives on future directions in this field.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addr.2024.115477DOI Listing

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