Development of an in vitro method for modeling drug release and subsequent tissue drug uptake and deposition in a pulsatile flow network.

A novel benchtop model of drug elution and arterial drug deposition following stent implantation has been developed. The model contains a single drug loaded strut and a compartment simulating the vessel wall, housed in a flow chamber under a pulsatile flow regime. Each component has programmable transport properties that can be implemented into a computational model of drug elution. An initial experiment determining the effects of luminal flow on drug deposition patterns was performed. The results show that spatial distribution of drug correlates with areas of low and recirculating flow surrounding the strut. This spatial distribution of drug was shown to be dependent on both transient release behavior and the local flow field surrounding the strut. Furthermore, these results showed that the novel method could be used to study the effects of luminal flow in the presence of single or multiple struts. The method could also be used to explore more complex drug release strategies.