Highly porous drug-eluting structures: from wound dressings to stents and scaffolds for tissue regeneration.

Highly porous drug-eluting structures: from wound dressings to stents and scaffolds for tissue regeneration. Biomatter. 2012 Oct-Dec;2(4):239-70 Authors: Elsner JJ, Kraitzer A, Grinberg O, Zilberman M Abstract For many biomedical applications, there is need for porous implant materials. The current article focuses on a method for preparation of drug-eluting porous structures for various biomedical applications, based on freeze drying of inverted emulsions. This fabrication process enables the incorporation of any drug, to obtain an "active implant" that releases drugs to the surrounding tissue in a controlled desired manner. Examples for porous implants based on this technique are antibiotic-eluting mesh/matrix structures used for wound healing applications, antiproliferative drug-eluting composite fibers for stent applications and local cancer treatment, and protein-eluting films for tissue regeneration applications. In the current review we focus on these systems. We show that the release profiles of both types of drugs, water-soluble and water-insoluble, are affected by the emulsion's formulation parameters. The former's release profile is affected mainly through the emulsion stability and the resulting porous microstructure, whereas the latter's release mechanism occurs via water uptake and degradation of the host polymer. Hence, appropriate selection of the formulation parameters enables to obtain desired controllable release pr...
Source: Biomatter - Category: Biotechnology Tags: Biomatter Source Type: research