Treatments of paclitaxel with poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) to improve drug release from poly(ɛ-caprolactone) matrix for film-based stent

Drug-loaded biodegradable films as a principal part of film-based stent were investigated for controlled drug delivery systems. In this study, solid dispersion technique, a pretreatment method of paclitaxel (PTX), was applied to prepare the PTX-loaded poly(ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL) films. Drug dissolution rates and characteristics of the poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP)/PTX solid dispersions (SDs) and physical mixtures (PMs) were investigated to show that the PVP/PTX SDs were successfully prepared before being incorporated in biodegradable films. Afterwards, the effect of the application of SDs on improving drug release behavior, weightlessness, crystalline states, and surface and internal morphologies of the films were studied. It was found that, the films with SDs showed a higher drug release rate than the films with PMs or pure PTX. In addition, the content of PVP in the SDs also had impact on drug release behavior: the more PVP in SDs, the faster the drug was released. According to the drug release test and weightlessness study, the possible drug release mechanism was put forward for the films with SDs. The application of solid dispersion technique showed a remarkable effect on improving drug release behavior for film-based biodegradable stent drug delivery systems.

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