Microneedles in breast cancer: revolutionizing diagnosis and treatment horizons

Breast cancer (BC) is a prevalent and life-threatening disease that demands effective diagnostic and therapeutic solutions. Despite advancements in treatments such as chemotherapy, current approaches often involve invasive techniques that may cause significant patient discomfort and side effects. Microneedles offer a promising alternative for both BC diagnosis and treatment, providing minimally invasive sampling and targeted drug delivery. Microneedles bypass the gastrointestinal and metabolic barriers associated with traditional drug administration, allowing direct delivery of therapeutic agents to BC tissues while minimizing systemic toxicity. There are various microneedles types: solid, coated, dissolving, hollow, and hydrogel-forming. Microneedles exhibit unique mechanisms for delivering drugs and detecting BC biomarkers. Advances in microneedles materials and fabrication methods, including polymers, ceramics, metals, and biocompatible substances, enhance microneedles efficiency and safety. Microneedles have also been applied in BC immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and photothermal and photodynamic therapies, demonstrating high efficacy in tumour reduction, survival improvement, and reduced side effects in preclinical models. While microneedles show substantial potential, challenges such as variability in skin penetration, mechanical strength, and clinical scalability must be addressed. Continued research and clinical trials are essential to optimize microneedle technology for future BC management, potentially revolutionizing non-invasive cancer care. An extensive literature review has been carried out on microneedles for BC diagnosis and treatment horizons using ScienceDirect, PubMed and Google Scholar from 2009 to 2025. using Science Direct, PubMed and Google Scholar from 2009 to 2025.