ABSTRACT
Vaccination is an effective way to reduce the morbidity and mortality of infectious diseases. As a needle-free transcutaneous immunization (NF-TCI) vaccination technology, microneedles (MNs), composed of multiple micro-needles orderly attached to a substrate, can overcome the problems of low immune efficiency, poor compliance and waste of resources that exists in the conventional vaccination by injection, thus becoming a research hotspot in biomedicine. The microneedle vaccine can directly break through the stratum corneum barrier of the skin without touching nerves and blood vessels in the dermis, and effectively delivers the vaccine to the immune cells in the skin tissue to initiate the immune response of the body, thus triggering strong humoral and cellular immune processes. Vaccine delivery via the MNs system possesses the advantages of high safety, satisfying immune effect and practical economy, and shows great prospect in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases and antineoplastic therapy. This article reviews the development background of MNs in transcutaneous immunization, the types of vaccine delivery, the factors affecting the immune effect, the problems to be solved and development direction in the future.