Drug diffusion and release from a bioerodible spherical capsule

Jain, A., Mcginty, S. and Pontrelli, G. (2022) Drug diffusion and release from a bioerodible spherical capsule. International Journal of Pharmaceutics, 616, 121442. (doi: 10.1016/j.ijpharm.2021.121442)

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Abstract

Controlled release of a drug contained in a spherical polymer capsule is of significant interest in many fields of medicine. There is growing interest in tailoring the erosion properties of the drug to help control and optimize the drug release process. Theoretical understanding of the nature of drug release from a bioerodible capsule is, therefore, important for designing effective drug delivery systems. While drug release from a fixed-radius capsule is relatively easier to model, the shrinking nature of a bioerodible capsule due to surface erosion presents several difficulties in theoretical modeling. This work presents a closed-form solution for the drug concentration distribution and drug delivery characteristics from a spherical capsule undergoing linear surface erosion. This problem is solved by a transformation that converts the moving boundary problem into a fixed-boundary problem. For uniform initial drug distribution, the solution is shown to depend on a single non-dimensional parameter. The theoretical model is used to develop an understanding of the impact of varying the drug diffusion coefficient and rate of erosion on drug delivery characteristics. It is found that, in general, the nature of drug release in a bioerodible sphere is determined by a delicate balance between two simultaneously occurring processes – erosion and diffusion. This work improves the theoretical understanding of diffusion in drug delivery systems by accounting for the practical erosion phenomena, and may contribute towards the design and optimization of drug delivery systems.

Item Type:Articles
Additional Information:Funding from the European Research Council under the European Union Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (No. FP/2014-2020) ERC Grant Agreement No. 739964 (COPMAT) is acknowledged. This work is also partially supported by Italian MIUR (PRIN 2017 project: Mathematics of active materials: from mechanobiology to smart devices, project number 2017KL4EF3).
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Pontrelli, Dr Giuseppe and Mcginty, Dr Sean
Authors: Jain, A., Mcginty, S., and Pontrelli, G.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering
College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Biomedical Engineering
Journal Name:International Journal of Pharmaceutics
Publisher:Elsevier
ISSN:0378-5173
ISSN (Online):1873-3476
Published Online:04 January 2022
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
First Published:First published in International Journal of Pharmaceutics 616: 121442
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

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