Using Skin PAMPA For Transdermal Patch Testing

Purpose Using the skin as absorption site presents unique challenges that have facilitated the progression of transdermal drug delivery in the past decades. Efforts in drug research have been devoted to find a quick and reproducible model for predicting the skin penetration of molecules, because the in vitro or in vivo animal models are expensive, labor-intensive and suffer from poor reproducibility. The Parallel Artificial Membrane Permeability Assay (PAMPA) 1 has been extended for prediction of transdermal penetration by developing the “skin-mimetic” artificial membrane 2. Having a high standardization potential and being a high throughput method, PAMPA can become an ideal model for prediction of skin penetration in early stages of drug development. In the present study commercially available transdermal patches (3 nicotine, 2 fentanyl, 1 ketoprofen) are studied. Data are compared to the declared permeation speed that is indicated by the manufacturers.