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Scientists from all over the world do their best for the treatment of various diseases and speedy recovery of patients.
Melanoma is a kind of skin cancer. And malignant melanoma is another term used for it. It develops due to the overproduction of melanocytes (pigment-producing cells in the skin).
How melanoma develops?
Usually, it develops on the skin but in rare cases, it also occurs in the mouth and intestine, and eye.
Melanoma is life-threatening due to its rapid spread to other organs of the body if not treated at early stages. There are different environmental and genetic factors that lead to the establishment of melanoma.
Sun radiations are one of the major causes of melanoma which is an environmental factor while genetic factors include family history and inherited genotype.
Skin cancer accounts for 160,000 new cases in white people living in sunny climates. Previously the effective treatment for melanoma was surgical resection of tumor at early stages.
This tumor spread quickly throughout the body. Due to this quick spread, its treatment is difficult.
Treatment of Melanoma
Different treatments have been used for melanoma such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
But the repeated treatments may cause toxicity and side effects and also these therapies are very painful and for the treatment of sensitive organs of the body such as for ocular melanoma and eye melanoma these treatments were not be suggested as the best treatment.
Keeping this in mind scientists from Purdue University develop a wearable patch that provides an advanced treatment to the people affected from melanoma.
But the development of this wearable patch is a landmark in the treatment of cancer.
We developed a novel wearable patch with fully miniaturized needles, enabling unobtrusive drug delivery through the skin for the management of skin cancers
Chi Hwan Lee
said , an assistant professor from Purdue University. The uniqueness of this patch is that it is dissolvable by body fluids in an organized manner.
When the patch covered the skin. The substrate of the patch dissolves in one minute leading to the slow dissolution of silicon needles in the tissues after several months.
Wearable patch specifications
This patch is a flexible, thin, water soluble and painless film containing micro needles that are biocompatible and provides no harm to the body tissues. It is an ideal treatment for timed- release medication.
A specialized pattern is used to design this wearable patch. It consists of a thin film of extremely small needles which is painless.
Nanoscale pores are present on the surface of microneedle. And it has a large drug carrying capacity as compared to other conventional treatments.
Lee said the nanoneedles could deliver the chemotherapeutic drug to the target melanoma sites in a sustainable way. The center of attention of the research team of Prof.
Lee is to see through engineering and medical needs. His team is an expert in the development of wearable devices.
American Cancer Society (ACS) Nano Journel published this work. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported this research.
Prof. Lee’s team is now looking forward to using this technology for the treatment of various other diseases.
