Technology & skills

Laser tissue interactions

One very important aspect of successful intraepidermal drug delivery is to guarantee efficient diffusion from the pore interior via the pore walls into the surrounding skin tissue. In order to achieve this, the laser must ablate tissue to create a large enough pore without any thermal damage of the adjacent tissue.

Pantec Biosolutions has particular expertise in laser physics, optics and electronical engineering

• High repetition rate pulsed laser technology -> formation of hundreds of pores in seconds
• Pore formation in small steps to avoid deep pores -> pores break through the stratum corneum and parts of the epidermis, but they do not penetrate the dermis, where nerve cells and blood vessels reside
• Optical methods that convert  the natural spear head shaped laser beam into a flat top shape -> This allows finetuning of the pore without reaching the dermis
• Skin layer detection -> This feature is currently being developed and will be combined with the laser in a feedback loop as an online pore control system

Biomedical application and regulatory expertise
   
Pantec Biosolutions employs a team of scientists that carry out formulation development, intraepidermal permeation experiments and basic development work that leads to an understanding of how pore properties influence the permeation of the target drugs.
Clinical studies are carried out with external partner companies.
It is Pantec Biosolutions' mission to carry out internal biomedical development to a point of basic understanding of permeation rates with a pilot formulation. After this proof of principle the intraepidermal system will be further developed by professional drug patch companies in collaboration with a Pharma partner company

Pantec Biosolutions' basic skills are

• Formulation development
• In vitro permeation of target drugs in formulation on human skin
• Pore measurement - microscopical method development
• Regulatory process management leading to ISO 13485 in the near future

Technology partnering Pantec Biosolutions currently employs six engineers and scientists. We combine this powerful inhouse capacities with technology partners in the US and Europe. The total workforce of the P.L.E.A.S.E.® - project is around 30 FTE's (80% engineers and 20% biomedical scientists).