Structural and Interfacial Effects on Drug Release Kinetics of Liquid-Based Fibrous Catheter

Catheterization is indispensable in the field of modern medicine. However, catheter-related thrombosis and infections almost inevitably occur during the process, and as drugs can only be administered at the end of catheter, auxiliary strategies are required for successful implantation. Considering these intractable limitations, a type of self-adaptive, anti-coagulate liquid-based fibrous catheter has been developed. More importantly, it has positional drug release property that traditional catheters desperately need but couldn’t attain. Although enlightening, the feasibility and performance of the positional drug release have only been demonstrated by fluorescents, the specific drug release kinetics remains unknown for adaptation to application scenarios. Therefore, we systematically investigate the structural and interfacial effects of drug molecules and fibrous matrixes on drug release kinetics in a liquid-based fibrous catheter. Theoretical calculations and experiments demonstrate that oleophilic and hydrophilic molecules release slowly due to a dissolution-diffusion mechanism. Amphipathic molecules, however, will significantly affect the gating performance by affecting the interfacial stability, hence they release quickly with emulsifying the gating liquid. Besides the significant impact of molecular properties and interfacial effects, matrix pore size also has a slight influence that molecules release faster in bigger pores. Through this study, the liquid-based fibrous catheter may step further toward practical applications including chemotherapy, haemodialysis, angiography, etc . to overcome the existing catheter-related limitations. Graphical Abstract