Applications > Medical Applications > Stents

Drug eluting stents are now widely used to treat blockages of the coronary arteries. These devices generally have drug eluting surfaces (known as Drug Eluting Stents or DESs) to minimise the risk of various after-effects of the stent and the insertion procedure, i.e. restenosis, late stent thrombosis, etc. Click here for more info

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) affects more than 25 million people in the world. The focus of treating this condition has shifted to minimally invasive surgeries such as stenting, which are now outnumbering the surgical procedures performed.

What developed as a solution to treat blocking in coronary arteries has migrated and become the defacto treatment for stenosis in arteries across the body. The latest below the-knees stents are used to treat critical limb ischaemia patients and prevent amputation. Click here for more info

There is requirement for new stent coating technologies that are not dependant on the polymer drug eluting technology due to its link to late stent thrombosis and its insufficient adherence to the metal for the flexibility necessary in vascular stents.

EnBIO's CoBlast™ technology can offer the following competitive advantage functions to stent manufacturers:

• Biocompatiable Surface: The CoBlast™ process will add a HA surface to a stent (in a permanent manifestation which will not crack or come away from the nitinol surface). Such a HA surface will prevent the seeping of nickel from the nitinol. A HA coating also encourages an endothelial cell layer to grow around the stent. This will reduce the scarring and potentially eliminate the need for a restenosis prevention drug. Click here for more info
• Restenosis Prevention Drug Delivery Surface: (e.g. a anti-proliferation drug such as sirolimus, paclitaxel, etc). EnBIO's drug delivery technology uses HA microspheres instead of a polymer as the drug carrying media. This means that the risk of restenosis is eliminated via the use of the anti-proliferation drug, and the risk of late stent thrombosis is eliminated via the elimination of the polymer and the risk of it coming lose. Click here for more info
• Antiplatelet Drug Eluting Surface: (e.g. plavix, ticlid, etc). Using EnBIO's drug delivery technology to add these drugs could potentially eliminate the need for patients to take long term antiplatelet drugs following the insertion of a drug eluting stent.
• Any of the above combined: A stent with either of the proposed surface modification approaches could replace all the drug eluting coronary stents used today, eliminate the residual late stent thrombosis issues caused by the polymer drug carrying layer, and expand the entire drug eluting stent technology into the vascular stent arena for the first time - due to the adhesion of the HA layer to the stent metal.