Microjet drug delivery system with enhanced drug penetration performance by fractional laser pre-ablation

Abstract

Disclosed is drug delivery system for effectively administering a drug into a human or animal body tissue. The microjet drug delivery system includes (a) a microjet injector including: a pressure chamber partially sealed by an elastic membrane and containing a pressure-inducing liquid fluid-tightly filled therein; and a drug chamber adjacent to the pressure chamber, wherein the elastic membrane is disposed between the pressure and drug chambers, wherein the drug solution is contained in the drug chamber, wherein the drug chamber has a micro-nozzle partially defined in a wall thereof for ejecting the drug solution out of the drug chamber; (b) a laser generator for generating a laser beam and emitting the laser beam out of the laser generator, wherein the laser generator is configured by irradiating the laser beam into the pressure-inducing liquid in the microjet injector, thereby generating a bubble in the pressure-inducing liquid; and (c) a fractional laser filter module configured for splitting the laser beam incident from the laser generator into a plurality of fractional laser beams, each beam has a reduced diameter, and for irradiating the fractional laser beams. According to the microjet drug delivery system, the pre-ablating of the skin with the fractional laser beams to partially remove the stratum corneum may enable the drug microjet based injection to allow the drug to be effectively invaded into a skin tissue at the portion where the stratum corneum is partially removed and relatively softened.