Xiang Zhang
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Title: New technology for toughened and reinforced PLLA with phosphorous glass to form nanocomposites for bioresorbable vascular scaffold applications
Biography
Biography: Xiang Zhang
Abstract
Bare Metal Stents (BMS) and Drug Eluting Stents (DES) are the established technologies in cardiovascular therapy. There are, however, clinical complications associated with these technologies, such as, early stage restenosis, very late thrombosis and risk associated with revision surgery. In light of these challenges research focus has turned to the development of bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS) technologies. Abbott has developed one PLLA biodegradable polymeric stent that is made from PLLA. One drawback of the PLLA is brittle because its glass transition is about 65 C. To overcome the problem, we firstly toughened PLLA then reinforce the materials by employing resorbable bioglass. Through a systematic study involving 14 organisations, we have successfully developed a family of toughened and reinforced polyesters with controlled degradation rate. This presentation will report the development of a reinforced resorbable therapeutic cardiovascular stent application to address the known limitations of cardiovascular technologies. We aim to deliver a bioresorbable stent with intrinsic toughness for handling and deployment via balloon angioplasty, radial strength, controlled drug-release technology to suppress restenosis and surface functionalisation to promote endothelialisation to reduce risk of thrombosis. We present the novel synthetic polymer-glass composites developed as candidate stent-core materials and describe both their preparation and the characterisation of their mechanical behaviour, in vitro degradation and cytocompatibility.