Generic Molding Platform for Simple, Low-Cost Fabrication of Polymeric Microneedles

Micromolding technology is widely used for the fabrication of polymer microneedles for transdermal and intradermal drug delivery applications. Geometric features of microneedles in molding are solely determined by geometry of the master mold template. Fabrication of master mold template usually involves costly and cumbersome technologies due to small feature sizes typical of microneedles. In this research, a novel molding platform is designed that is fabricated using low-cost and simple techniques with flexibility of producing large number of microneedle geometries. The proposed molding platform eliminates need for developing multiple mold templates for fabrication of various geometries of polymer microneedles. Utility of this molding platform is demonstrated in polylactic acid-based solid thermoplastic microneedles and polyacrylic acid-based dissolvable microneedles with various aspect ratio settings. Various microneedles fabricated at heights differing with resolution of as low as 100 mu m are successfully achieved using specified settings in the molding platform. The suitability of fabricated microneedles for drug delivery applications is evaluated by in vitro and in vivo testing.