Effect of the coating morphology on the drug release from engineered drug-polymer nanocomposites.

The ElectroNanospray process (Nanocopoeia, Inc) transforms drugs and polymers into many nanoscale material states including powders, liquids, encapsulated particles, and coatings. This enabling technology platform allows application of polymers and drugs to the surface of medical devices such as coronary stents in a single-stage process. Modification of ElectroNanospray process parameters resulted in surface coatings with rich morphologies ranging in appearance from smooth and heterogeneous to highly porous and rough (open matrix).

Multimodal dynamic imaging of therapeutic biomedical coatings in aqueous medium.

Drug release from therapeutic biomedical films such as drug-polymer composite coatings on drug eluting stents is a highly complex and poorly understood process. The dynamics of drug release and the evolution of surface morphology during release have direct impact on the performance of the device. This information is not easily accessible, and there have been few systematic studies to investigate drug release from biomedical coatings in real time.