Development of Coherent Raman Scattering Microscopy for Monitoring Drug Delivery

Topical pharmaceuticals are a vitally important part of modern medicine. Currently, characterising the dermatopharmacokinetics of these drugs is very difficult, and not possible in either real-time, or with a high level of accuracy. This thesis applies three coherent Raman scattering microscopy techniques to the challenge of video-rate monitoring of a porcine skin model undergoing penetration by two different, widely used, pharmaceuticals. It was found that the data taken during these time-course experiments could be used in conjunction with a Beer-Lambert expression, and Fick’s second law, to extract valuable permeation data – namely the skin-solute partition coefficient, and diffusion coefficient – of these pharmaceuticals.