Qiuxi Fan, Otto H. York Department of Chemical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, Kamalesh K. Sirkar, Chemical Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Warren Street, Newark, NJ 07102-1982, and Bozena Michniak, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ 07103.
This work investigated the application of a porous polyaniline (PANi) membrane as a conducting polymeric membrane as well as an electrode in an iontophoretic transdermal drug delivery (TDD) system. Model drugs studied were: caffeine (MW: 194.2), lidocaine HCl (MW: 270.8) and doxycycline HCl (MW: 480.1). The PANi membrane was first tested as a simple membrane between the donor and receptor solutions; it provided satisfactory permeation profiles; the observed flux values were well described by a simplified mass transport model. A mouse skin was then mounted beneath the PANi film; such a composite system also presented satisfactory permeation profiles. Iontophoretic TDD experiments were next performed using both Ag|AgCl electrodes and PANi|AgCl electrodes for comparison; a PANi anode replaced the Ag anode in the last set. For doxycycline HCl, the flux and the 24-hour accumulation from the PANi|AgCl set were 94.4±81.2μg/cm2 hr and 2760±3980μg/cm2 respectively; those from the Ag|AgCl set were zero. For lidocaine HCl, the flux and 10-hour accumulation from the PANi|AgCl set were respectively 43±15μg/cm2 hr and 392±130 μg/cm2; the corresponding values from the Ag|AgCl set were 48±20μg/cm2 hr and 348±78 μg/cm2. Porous polyaniline membrane appears to be capable of replacing the Ag part of Ag|AgCl electrode system; further such a membrane can exercise additional control over agent transport rate. Aqueous-organic partitioning system through the porous membrane of PANi was tested with this novel technique as well. Because of the rather low porosity of the synthesized PANi film, such a system did not yield a high permeation rate.