Drug carrier particle adhesion depends on bifurcation angle (675.1)

Abstract

In this study, Idealized Microvascular Networks (IMN) representing different angles observed in the microcirculation were used to investigate the effect of bifurcation angle on drug carrier particle interaction with the vessel wall. IMN was fabricated using soft lithography processes followed by study of adhesion of biotin‐conjugated microspheres (diameter 2 µm) to avidin coated vessel walls. The networks used in these studies comprised bifurcation angles of 30°, 60°, 90°, and 120°.Our findings indicate that particle adhesion decreased with increase in shear rate in both bifurcations and linear areas of the channels. However, bifurcations were found to have significantly higher particle adhesion (1.5X or more) compared to linear channels. Furthermore, particle adhesion was found to increases linearly with an increase in the bifurcation angle.Our results show that drug carrier particle adhesion is significantly affected by the presence of bifurcations and their corresponding angle and therefore their design needs to be tailored to account for higher binding propensity at larger bifurcation angles.