Bioadhesive thin film formulation using the ultrasonic stent sprayer.

Abstract

In tackling the problem of blocked coronary artery, an alternative to heart bypass is angioplasty balloons. Over the years, there have been many improvements to the balloons such as the development of Bare Metal Stents (BMS) and Drug Eluting Stents (DES). Although DES dealt efficiently with some of the problems of BMS, there is still another problem of late stent thrombosis. Hence, there is much interest in Drug Eluting Balloons (DEB) that does not bring this problem but presents more benefits with the paclitaxel drug coated on it.

There are many ways to coat a thin film of bioadhesive and the drug on a DEB and so, the focus of this project would be to tap on the advantages of ultrasonic atomisation, and use the Sono Tek Stent Sprayer to spray coat a film with thickness of at least 10µm.

By varying the 5 parameters such as the concentration of bioadhesive solution, flow rate, revolutions per minute, drying gas pressure, and volume sprayed, the desired thickness of films could be produced by the usage of the Sono Tek Stent Sprayer. Furthermore, time taken to spray coat these films is also reduced by experimenting with various ways to heat up the ambient air around the set-up.

In this project, bioadhesive thin films that have thickness of at least 10µm were fabricated by the Sono Tek Stent Sprayer, making it a viable method of spray coating for high quality bioadhesive thin films.