**8. Improvement of galantamine hydrobromide (GaHBr) permeation by plasma irradiation**

Galantamine hydrobromide (GaHBr) (**Figure 14**) is an alkaloid, isolated from plant species such as Narcissus and Lycoris species [93]. Treatment of Alzheimer's disease occurs by inhibition of acetylcholinesterase enzyme. The chemical structure of galantamine hydrobromide is shown in **Figure 14**.

**Figure 14.** Chemical structure of galantamine hydrobromide.

As GaHBr is a hydrophilic molecule with a low molecular weight (368 Da), usually transdermal patches with chemical enhancers are used for transdermal delivery [94]. Using microplasma for the first time for enhancement of transdermal delivery of GaHBr, a slight improvement was observed with comparison of passive diffusion (**Figure 15**). Pig skin was irradiated for 3 min and then a water solution with GaHBr was applied on the skin. The permeation profiles of GaHBr through the pig skin delivered 5.35 ± 2.34 and 11.53 ± 2.89 μg/cm2 for the control and the plasma-irradiated sample 24 h post-experiment, respectively [69]. These results lead to the expectation that microplasma discharge can be used to enhance the skin delivery of hydrophilic drugs and larger molecular drugs in the future.

**Figure 15.** Amount of penetrated GaHBr—passive diffusion and after microplasma irradiation (red circles) [69].
