Microstructured Transdermal Systems

3M Solid Microstructured Transdermal System Microneedle Delivery

While there are many advantages to delivering drugs through the skin, the skin’s inherent barrier properties limit the size and type of molecules that can passively diffuse through the skin at rates sufficient for therapeutic effect. 3M is leveraging core technology in microstructured materials and processes to expand the range of medications that can be delivered transdermally to patients.

Solid Microstructured Transdermal System (sMTS) is a transdermal system for targeted drug delivery to the dermal/epidermal layers of the skin. sMTS uses biocompatible, polymeric microneedles to bypass the barrier properties of the stratum corneum and deliver previously undeliverable molecules, including vaccines, proteins and peptides.

sMTS has the potential to improve health care delivery and provide a key advantage to your program:

• Improves overall delivery efficiency for vaccines
• Enhances the efficacy of vaccines by targeting antigen presenting cells within the skin
• Enables transdermal delivery of proteins and other biomolecules
• Easy-to-use, easy-to-train system, facilitates self-administration
• Needle-free, low-pain delivery reassures patients
• Available in a solid design with a hollow design in development

With the high cost of many large molecule drugs, it’s important to not only optimize bioavailability to patients, but also minimize the amount of API utilized in the manufacturing process. When you work with 3M, we focus our effort to ensure that from manufacturing to patient absorption overall API utilization is as efficient as possible, improving the economics for our partners.

Let the 3M development team demonstrate how MTS technology may meet your application requirements.