Wearable patch may provide new treatment option for skin cancer

Scientists have created a wearable patch as an improved treatment for people with skin cancer.

Traditional therapies for melanoma such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy suffer from toxicity and side effects from repeated treatments, as the melanoma cells they are intended to combat are aggressive and recurrent.

While less invasive methods of delivering chemotherapy to specific areas of the body are available, their use has been hindered by the painful size of the they use.

Researchers at Purdue University designed a wearable patch with miniaturised needles which deliver the treatment through the skin.

"We developed a novel wearable patch with fully miniaturised needles, enabling unobtrusive drug delivery through the skin for the management of skin cancers," said Chi Hwan Lee, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering at Purdue University.

"Uniquely, this patch is fully dissolvable by body fluids in a programmable manner such that the patch substrate is dissolved within one minute after the introduction of needles into the skin, followed by gradual dissolution of the silicon needles inside the tissues within several months."

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Mr Lee said he began working on the patch after his daughter expressed her fears about needles while receiving vaccinations.

He said the gradual slow dissolution of the nanoneedles allows for the long-lasting and sustainable delivery of cancer treatments.

"The uniqueness of our technology arises from the fact that we used extremely small but long-lasting silicon nanoneedles with sharpened angular tips that are easy for their penetration into the skin in a painless and minimally invasive manner," he added.

In research published in the journal ACS Nano, the researchers describe how the patch consists of silicon nanoneedles on a thin, flexible and water-soluble medical film.

The film serves as a temporary holder than can be placed on the skin during the insertion of the nanoneedles, which deliver the drug into the skin.

Mr Lee said the nanoneedles could deliver the chemotherapeutic drugs to target melanoma sites in a sustainable manner.

The nanoneedles dissolve in tissue fluids, allowing them to be completely absorbed in the body over months.