A highly advanced technique developed in Israel makes it possible to administer drugs transdermally and to visualise whether they really reach the innermost layers of the skin in real time with a special laser.
Transdermal administration (i.e. through the skin) of certain types of drugs and cosmetics would be the ideal solution to quickly get the substances to the deepest layers of the skin and also to other areas of the body. This method would avoid having to use the classic systems like injections, which are less precise and more 'inconvenient'.
However, so far, there has been an extremely limited use of the transdermal method (e.g. like nicotine patches for people trying to quit smoking).
In fact, the skin does what it has been 'modelled' to do throughout evolution very well, and that is to effectively protect everything below its various layers, preventing molecules from penetrating deeply, unless they have a diameter of less than a hundred nanometres (which is very rare in nature). One nanometre is equivalent to one millionth of a millimetre.
Another feature has also severely limited studies on the transdermal route, namely the opacity of the skin, which makes determining the precise quantities of substances that pass through it very complex.
However, there may soon be a way forward, thanks to research by an Israeli team from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, who have published their research on overcoming most of the limitations of current transdermal drug administration in the scientific journal ACS Nano.
The secret, they write, lies in nanodiamonds - nano-sized carbon particles produced by treating carbon at very high pressure and temperature.
By causing a controlled explosion, nanodiamond formation is triggered by the fusion of individual atoms, just as in nature (which, however, takes place over millions of years when carbon molecules turn into diamonds).
Travelling nanodiamonds that don’t cause damage
These ultra-small transporter granules can then be 'loaded' with active drug ingredients. Once in contact with the skin, nanodiamonds are able to penetrate the different layers thanks to their size (from the outside to the inside: epidermis, dermis and fat) without being toxic and without losing their precious cargo.
Also, as a result of their chemical and physical features, they have an antioxidant function, and thus protect the drugs or other molecules they carry, as well as being partly curative themselves.
Blue light laser monitoring
But what could truly enable the spread of nanodiamonds is another high-tech solution developed in Israel: a method that finally allows them to be quantified once they have penetrated the skin.
This is a blue light laser, different from the red light ones normally used for this kind of purpose and completely painless. When passed over the skin for a few seconds, and combined with specially designed software and an algorithm, it produces a 3-D image of the nanodiamonds’ position in the skin layers.
This type of system could make it possible to get the molecules involved under the skin, and then quantify how many of them actually reached their optimal destination under specific conditions, i.e. by standardising administration: the basic requirements for large-scale use of nanodiamonds as vehicles for administering drugs.
