A comparison of the in vitro permeation of niacinamide in mammalian skin and in the Parallel Artificial Membrane Permeation Assay (PAMPA) model

The in vitro skin penetration of pharmaceutical or cosmetic ingredients is usually assessed in human or animal tissue. However, there are ethical and practical difficulties associated with sourcing these materials; variability between donors may also be problematic when interpreting experimental data. Hence, there has been much interest in identifying a robust and high throughput model to study skin permeation that would generate more reproducible results. Here we investigate the permeability of a model active, niacinamide (NIA), in (i) conventional vertical Franz diffusion cells with excised human skin or porcine skin and (ii) a recently developed Parallel Artificial Membrane Permeation Assay (PAMPA) model.