Recently, three-dimensional printing includes a wide variety of manufacturing techniques, which are all based on digitally-controlled depositing of materials (layer-by-layer) to create freeform geometries. We have developed an aqueous-solvent-based micro-molding technique for creating polymeric, bio-degradable micro-structures which can be loaded with delicate bioactive therapeutic agents. The arrays of microneedles are integrated in an out-of-plane fashion with a base plate and can serve as patches for the release of drugs and vaccines. We used soft lithography and micro-molding to manufacture ceramic nanoporous. The process enables the incorporation of emerging protein based vaccines into sophisticated micro structures, e.g., microneedles, without damaging their biological efficacy as conventional (UV- or temperature-based) micro-molding processes would. As a demonstration, we successfully fabricated microneedles loaded with a peptide complex using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold, including the parameters to be controlled. The process is proven to be capable of molding microneedles with sufficient sharpness (down to 45 μm radius of curvature at the tips) to penetrate skin and exhibit transfection of peptide complexes, which can be used for designing customized drug delivery systems using 3D structures with biomaterials.

Rapid micro-molding process for fabricating polymeric 3D structures with biomaterials using hydrophobic elastomeric molds

256th National Meeting (2018)

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