The novel drug delivery to vascular wall using laser driven thermal balloon: basic study ex vivo

To enhance drug delivery performance of popular drug eluting balloon against re-stenosis after angioplasty, we have an idea regarding to adjacent use of our unique laser driven thermal balloon of which characteristics could realize short term and uniform temperature elevation to modify drug delivery characteristics. We have already reported a delivery enhancement effect using this idea, however, detailed characteristics have not been studied yet. We studied balloon dilatation in terms of vascular circumferential tension on the heating drug delivery performance using porcine carotid artery wall ex vivo. The extracted carotid artery was used and circumferential tension of 0-30 mN/mm2 was added. Heating drug delivery was performed on this carotid artery with the heated solution of hydrophobic fluorescent Rhodamine B with 3 μg/ml in concentration at 37 and 70°C. We obtained a defined drug delivery quantity as well as delivery depth by a microscopic fluorescence measurement on a cross section of the drug delivered vessel wall. In the cases of 70°C, we found the drug penetration increase against 3°C case. We predict that the collagen thermal denaturation of the vessel wall may play important role to this penetration. In the case of 3°C, we found the drug concentration on the intimal surface with 7 mN/mm2 was increased as 10-30 times as other tension values. We found surface grooves in this case using an electron micrography. Therefore, we think that the drug delivery enhancement might be related to the groove formations of the vessel wall.