A Silk-Based Microneedle Patch for Controlled Multi-Drug Delivery in Glioma Treatment

Multi-drug chemotherapy holds great promise for glioma treatment to improve the cure rate after surgical resection and prolong the survival time of patients. A reliable drug delivery system to circumvent the blood-brain barrier (BBB) with a precise control of multi-drug release is highly desired. In this work, we have designed and fabricated a silk-based microneedle patch with multiple release kinetics of drugs for in situ glioma treatment. The combination of tunable crystalline degree (for controlled temporal drug release) and well-defined morphology (for controlled spatial drug release) of individual silk microneedle arrays provides the combined ability to efficiently deliver tumor inhibitors into the tumor cavity and antiangiogenic agents into the blood vessel within seconds to weeks as needed. As a proof-of-concept, we implanted the device in the mouse model and found that the multi-drug microneedle patch could effectively enhance the treatment efficiency even at reduced dosages. Our approach offers great potential to a new class of therapeutic patches towards glioma treatment.