Transdermal drug delivery systems (TDDS) have many advantages and represent an excellent alternative to oral delivery and hypodermic injections, but can they be another alternative for the delivery of vaccinations?

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Previously limited by the inability of some drugs to enter the skin at therapeutically useful rates, the recent use of micron-scale needles in increasing skin permeability has shown to dramatically increase transdermal delivery, which opens the door for many more permutations of use.

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Microneedle TDDS patches can now be fabricated to deliver virus vaccines and potentially provide a viable alternative to conventional, nurse-administered methods.  With the additional benefit of cost reduction and sharp-waste reduction, these advantages make TDDS-based vaccine delivery an especially well-suited option for the treatment of widespread viral infectious diseases including pandemics.

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With mass-scale vaccination pushes requiring huge manpower to roll out, and with vaccine hesitancy a continual issue for many populations, hopefully, transdermals will soon be a new armor in the medical arsenal.