|
Abstract:
|
In drug eluting stents, the drug is incorporated into a polymer matrix, which acts as a diffusion barrier, thus slowing the rate of drug release. The drug-polymer coatings are routinely fabricated by dissolving a mixture of drug and polymer into a solvent. The solvent then evaporates, leaving a system consisting of essentially only drug and polymer. A thermodynamically consistent diffuse interface model has been developed that enables prediction of the structural evolution of controlled release composites during both fabrication and drug release. Calculations based on the theory have been conducted to probe the influence of drug-polymer interactions, drug loading, and evaporation rate on the effect of release media on delivery kinetics for biodegradable and non-degradable polymers. We study the effect of biodegradability on drug release in this work.
|
