Open AccessQuantitative two-photon microscopy imaging analysis of human skin to evaluate enhanced transdermal delivery by hybrid-type multi-lamellar nanostructure
Author(s) -
JoongHo Ahn,
Kyeong Hu Kim,
Kibaek Choe,
Joo Hyuck Lim,
Seung Ki Lee,
So Hyun Kim,
Pilhan Kim
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.9.003974
Subject(s) - transdermal , materials science , human skin , biomedical engineering , lamellar structure , microscopy , nanostructure , confocal microscopy , nanotechnology , optics , medicine , pathology , composite material , pharmacology , genetics , physics , biology
Transdermal skin delivery is a method to transport various topical formulations to a deeper skin layer non-invasively. Permeability analysis of many delivering agents has been mostly conducted by a simple tape stripping method. However, it cannot reveal a detailed depth-dependent distribution profile of transdermally delivered agents in the skin. In this work, we achieved a cellular-level depth-defined visualization of fluorophore-labelled human epidermal growth factor (EGF) transdermally delivered to human skin by using encapsulation with common liposomes and newly fabricated multi-lamellar nanostructures using a custom-design two-photon microscopy system. It was able to generate 3D reconstructed images displaying the distribution of human EGF inside the human skin sample with high-resolution. Based on a depthwise fluorescence intensity profile showing the permeation of human EGF, a quantitative analysis was performed to assess the transdermal delivery efficacy achieved by each formulation, showing a significant improvement of the efficacy with the utilization of multi-lamellar nanostructure.