A self-powered insulin patch pump with a superabsorbent polymer as a biodegradable battery substitute

Advancements in Insulin Pumps: A Comprehensive Exploration of Insulin Pump Systems, Technologies, and Future Directions

Insulin pumps have transformed the way diabetes is managed by providing a more accurate and individualized method of delivering insulin, in contrast to conventional injection routines. This research explores the progression of insulin pumps, following their advancement from initial ideas to advanced contemporary systems. The report proceeds to categorize insulin pumps according to their delivery systems, specifically differentiating between conventional, patch, and implantable pumps. Every category is thoroughly examined, emphasizing its unique characteristics and capabilities. A comparative examination of commercially available pumps is provided to enhance informed decision making. This section provides a thorough analysis of important specifications among various brands and models. Considered factors include basal rate and bolus dosage capabilities, reservoir size, user interface, and compatibility with other diabetes care tools, such as continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices and so on. This review seeks to empower healthcare professionals and patients with the essential information to improve diabetes treatment via individualized pump therapy options. It provides a complete assessment of the development, categorization, and full specification comparisons of insulin pumps.

Overcoming skin barriers through advanced transdermal drug delivery approaches

Upon exhaustive research, the transdermal drug delivery system (TDDS) has appeared as a potential, well-accepted, and popular approach to a novel drug delivery system. Ease of administration, easy handling, minimum systemic exposure, least discomfort, broad flexibility and tunability, controlled release, prolonged therapeutic effect, and many more perks make it a promising approach for effective drug delivery. Although, the primary challenge associated is poor skin permeability. Skin is an intact barrier that serves as a primary defense mechanism to preclude any foreign particle's entry into the body. Owing to the unique anatomical framework, i.e., compact packing of stratum corneum with tight junction and fast anti-inflammatory responses, etc., emerged as a critical physiological barrier for TDDS. Fusion with other novel approaches like nanocarriers, specially designed transdermal delivery devices, permeation enhancers, etc., can overcome the limitations. Utilizing such strategies, some of the products are under clinical trials, and many are under investigation. This review explores all dimensions that overcome poor permeability and allows the drug to attain maximum potential. The article initially compiles fundamental features, components, and design of TDDS, followed by critical aspects and various methods, including in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo methods of assessing skin permeability. The work primarily aimed to highlight the recent advancement in novel strategies for effective transdermal drug delivery utilizing active methods like iontophoresis, electroporation, sonophoresis, microneedle, needleless jet injection, etc., and passive methods such as the use of liposomes, SLN, NLC, micro/nanoemulsions, dendrimers, transferosomes, and many more nanocarriers. In all, this compilation will provide a recent insight on the novel updates along with basic concepts, the current status of clinical development, and challenges for the clinical translation of TDDS.

Electrically Conductive Fused Deposition Modeling Filaments: Current Status and Medical Applications

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is one of the most popular three dimensional (3D) printing techniques especially among researchers. Recently, FDM has been widely developed and improved in many areas. One of these improvements is the introduction of electrically conductive filaments. In general, conductive filaments are usually made of conductive polymer composites. These composites consist of a thermoplastic material blended with carbon-based materials. The quantity of commercially available conductive filaments has grown significantly in recent years. This paper presents a sample of currently available conductive filaments (eight filaments were chosen). These samples were compared by measuring resistance value and highlighting resulted defects of each sample. Additionally, this paper searched and reviewed articles that used conductive FDM filaments in medical applications. These articles were collected and summarized in terms of name of filaments were used, the specific function of the printed conductive object, and name of the printer used to print the conductive object. In conclusion, the main purpose of this project is to facilitate the work of future medical researchers who would like to use commercially available conductive FDM filaments.

Acoustofluidic Based Wireless Micropump for Portable Drug Delivery Applications. ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY. IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY. ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2021;2021:1276-1279. [PMID: 34891518 DOI: 10.1109/embc46164.2021.9629811]

In this study, an acoustofluidic based wireless micropump for drug delivery was proposed and fabricated. The key actuator of this micropump is a small gigahertz piezoelectric resonator, which could induce strong fluidic streaming at low applied power. This acoustofluidic micropump has stable and accurate dosage resolution (7.0 μL), and sufficient flow rate (1.34 mL/min). The miniaturized size and wireless controlled operation prove it as a portable drug delivery system.Clinical Relevance- The acoustofluidic based micropump could apply for the drug administration in a safe, effective and stable form. It has potential to integrate with miniaturized sensors and electronic circuit to form portable drug delivery systems, realizing smart on-demand drug delivery.