Ultrasound can enhance skin permeability to drugs

CAMBRIDGE, MA – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers have found a way to enhance skin permeability to drugs, increasing the efficiency of transdermal drug delivery. According to the researchers, this technology could pave the way for needle-free and non-invasive drug and vaccine delivery.

“This could be used for topical drugs such as steroids – cortisol, for example – systemic drugs and proteins such as insulin, as well as antigens for vaccination, among many other things,” said MIT chemical engineering graduate student Carl Schoellhammer, one of the lead authors of a recent paper on the new system.

Ultrasound waves have frequencies greater than the upper limit of human hearing, and can increase skin permeability by lightly wearing away the top layer of the skin, an effect that is transient and pain-free.

The research team discovered that applying two separate beams of ultrasound waves – one of low frequency and one of high frequency – can uniformly boost permeability across a region of the skin more rapidly than using a single beam of ultrasound waves.

The paper appears in the Journal of Controlled Release.