Reverse engineering of diffusion-limited controlled drug delivery devices

Abstract

A 3D fluid flow model was developed and used to study the effect of diffusion and geometric parameters on diffusion controlled drug delivery device in a capillary to mimic the in vivo behavior. It was observed that a desired release profile can be achieved by multiple strategies, e.g., a delayed release of the drug can be achieved either by increasing the size of the polymer coating or by changing the polymer coating so as to decrease the mutual diffusion coefficient of the drug in the polymer. The proposed model-based approach can be used to identify the relevant parameters, study their effects on the drug release and thus can be used in designing controlled drug delivery devices in a reverse engineering framework.