There are some really intriguing new technologies being discovered by startup companies in the field of flexible and printed electronics.
 
Feeligreen is one company that is poised to bring printed electronics to the medical and cosmetic fields. Founded in 2012 by Christophe Bianchi, Feeligreen is a French technology startup developing safe and effective drug delivery devices for a wide range of cosmetic and therapeutic applications.
 
Based in Grasse on the French Riviera, Feeligreen is set to revolutionize both the pharmaceutical and the cosmetic industries with an electronically controlled patch designed to actively diffuse drugs through the skin, in an ionized form.
 
With its first product, the Feeligold anti-wrinkle patch, Feeligreen has demonstrated the ability to implement new technologies and deliver meaningful results. The current developments of feeligreen are targeting both the cosmetic and medical industry.
 
A successful entrepreneur with 25 years of high-tech sales, marketing, engineering and management experience in high-tech industries, Bianchi started Feeligreen three years ago with the intent to apply semiconductor and microelectronics innovations to the dermo-cosmetic, dermo-pharma and dermo-medical market segments.
 
“Our main customers are the pharmaceutical companies, which are already formulating numerous drugs for use in patches,” Bianchi said. “We would sell them the flexible printed layout and the reusable active electronic unit to speed up the drug absorption.”
 
Known as active iontophoresis, this administration method uses a direct electrical current to cause ions of a soluble substance to move across the surface of the skin and diffuse into the underlying epidermis and dermis. Measuring about 20×20 mm and only a couple of millimeters thin, the compact electronic module driving the iontophoresis sits on top of a flexible printed electronics plaster with the right electrodes in place, doubling as the drug gel carrier.
 
The company notes that this transdermic drug delivery platform speeds up drug diffusion by a factor of four to 10. In the case of Lidocaine, which is commonly used as a local anaesthetic before vaccination, it only takes a few minutes for the drug to be fully delivered, instead of an hour.
 
Other medical or cosmetic use cases for such a patch include treatments for bedsore prevention, wound healing, anti-wrinkle drugs or full-fledged Botox treatments as patches instead of the injections currently requiring the intervention of a doctor.
 
Because the flexible part of the patch can take any shape and could be designed to wrap around large body areas, this wearable active patch could yield many innovative uses, including in sportswear to alleviate tendinitis or designed as “shapewear” for cellulitis treatment and thinning.
 
The electronic unit monitors continuously the local skin temperature and skin resistivity as well as other biometrics in order to securely dispense the right amount of current for optimum drug delivery.
 
Biocompatible materials are used for the flexible patches, and Feeligreen will develop custom electrode designs for different drug formulations or dispensing areas. For now, the company is hoping to manufacture and ship its product for cosmetic and non-medical applications, but in the long term, Feeligreen could license its technology to pharma labs in the medical sector.
 
For quality control, the electronic unit and the flexible patches are all made in France, sourced from partners no farther than 30 km away. Feeligreen is now studying different possibilities to build its manufacturing unit in Grasse.
 
In the end of 2014 Feeligreen closed a funding round of €1 million (US$1.25 million) with undisclosed venture capitalists and an industrial partner.
 
With the recent investment of leading venture capital and industrial group, Feeligreen will reinforce its research, development and industrialization capabilities to build up their next generation of products.
 
Bianchi noted that Feeligreen’s drug delivery system has even greater potential, such as eliminatibg the use of needles for vaccines.
 
 “Our drug delivery platform is so effective that in the case of vaccines, it could be used in place of needles, much more cost-effective and safer as you reduce the risks of infection,” said Bianchi. “It is just a matter of finding the right drug formulation, ionto-optimized with the right conductivity.”