Curcumin Found to be Effective Treatment Against Skin Conditions Using Microneedles

An interesting collaboration among researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Sai Yerneni, Phil Campbell, Burak Ozdoganlar, and Ezgi Yalcintas, has recently developed a method to allow the use of curcumin as a vigorous treatment distinctly.

As specified in a Phys.org report, while turmeric root has been medically employed throughout the world for hundreds of years, science has discovered that its main chemical component, curcumin, is breaking down in the body before its maximum benefits can be attained.

Essentially, Curcumin is an anti-cancerous, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antimicrobial polyphenol that exists in turmeric.

Nevertheless, its isolated, pure form is unstable because of its quick degradation within and clearance from the body. More so, it illustrates one of the biggest obstacles to transplantation as a practical treatment.

Exosomes

It serves as motivation, too, for scientists to explore encapsulation tactics to shield the curcumin inside the body of a human.

One such encapsulation method is to integrate curcumin into exosomes. Exosomes, in particular, are nanometric extracellular vesicles that the human body uses for cell-to-cell communication by moving lipids, metabolites, proteins, and nucleic acids.

As specified in the journal, Acta Biomaterialia, placing curcumin in exosomes, the chemical is stable enough to move throughout the body and attain its therapeutic effect.

Even though other researchers have tried using exosomes to deliver curcumin, the enhancement in the stability of curcumin was insufficient for its use as a treatment.

Treatment Through Curcumin

A natural stabilizer protein called Albumin in the human body can address such a challenge. Postdoctoral researcher in chemical engineering Yerneni, and researcher professor of biomedical engineering Cambell, have developed a hybrid technique to leverage the distinctive properties of both albumin and exosomes.

The two engineered an exosome-albumin hybrid system for the delivery of treatments, including curcumin, detailed on the Examine website.

Campbell explained that previous attempts to load curcumin into different lipid membrane-bound nanoparticles suffered from curcumin either being undependably loaded or subject to brief retention times, while the inclusion of albumin is binding to the curcumin keeping it in the lumen of the exosome, shielded from degradation.

Moreover, even though albumin-curcumin association and exosome encapsulation could offer a stable drug delivery system, targeted delivery to desired organs or tissues remains another change.

Microneedle Array Patches

When injected into the blood, most of the exosomes are inclined to accumulate in the liver instead of reaching the targeted tissue or organ.

To this end, an attractive method is to have the curcumin-albumin-containing exosomes delivered using microneedle array patches for skin-targeted applications.

Microneedle arrays or MNA contain tens or hundreds of needles, each as thin as human hair and not seen by the naked eye.

These micro-scale needles are arranged in an array format on a patch tinier than a penny through a manufacturing and application process.

Pain-Free Method

In this circumstance, dissolvable microneedles are formed by incorporating the drug, exosomes, with a sugar type and having them solidified into their shape.

When injected into the tissue, the needles dissolve away and deliver the drug in a targeted and accurate manner. Because of their small size, microneedles are not causing tissue damage.

As such, they can be employed as a "pain-free" method of delivering treatments into or through the skin, enhancing patient compliance and targeted delivery.

Remarkably, such microneedle patches can be administered by the patients minus any training or specialized equipment.

Curcumin Compounds Combined With MNAs

The study authors discovered another major advantage of employing MNAs. When the exosome-fortified curcumin compounds were combined into MNAs, the researchers discovered that the stability of such compounds at room temperature dramatically increased.

Describing their new work, Yerneni said this is big since one of the major drawbacks of the present vaccines is the logistics of transportation needing cold storage.

He also said that this particularly disadvantages poorer nations that cannot foster long cold storage supply chains. Yerneni is delighted that such a technology can overcome such hurdles.

Related information about microneedle treatment is shown on JAMA Network's YouTube video below:

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