Acid-resistant capsules with sugar microneedles for oral delivery of ascorbic acid

Abstract

Oral delivery is one of the most common ways of drug administration because of its simplicity. However, this method of delivery can be limited for many drugs like peptides or proteins. Scientists have been trying to enable oral delivery of this kind of structures for decades. Because intestine does not have sharp pain receptors like skin, the insertion of microneedles would not be painfully. Modelled by previous research, we tried to formulate sugar microneedles that contain active substance (ascorbic acid) and incorporate them into the acid-resistant capsules. We have chosen sugar because of its ability to dissolve into the intestine. 3D printed microneedles were used as a model for the preparation of different silicon molds. These molds were used for sugar microneedles. Different types of sugar showed different types of performance, for example, a combination of two sugars resulted to be the best in our case. Our next step after successfully produced sugar microneedles is focused on their ability to dissolve into the intestine. Using acidic and basic medium we have examined the behavior of the sugar microneedles formulation that we put into acid-resistant capsules.