Research Of Paclitaxel-eluting Covered Stents For Esophageal Cancer

Esophageal obstruction occurs in advanced esophageal cancer, which hinders patients to take food and seriously affects the quality of their life. So, esophageal stents are used in clinical to make esophageal dilate and improve patients’quality of life in the short term. However, the tumor proliferation or the hyperplasia of mucous tissue would quickly lead to the endoluminal restenosis again. The application of the drug-eluting stent(DES) can reduce incidences of in-stent restenosis and complications significantly. DES keeps the same function of the traditional stent. Furthermore, the loading drug of DES can be targeted to the pathological region, charactering the minimum side-effect. And the sustained release would keep a sufficient drug concentration for a long time. All these are good for the improvement of the long-term quality of patients’life.In this essay, we made a detailed review of the background information of this experiment in the first step, including the development of stents, the preparation and release mechanism of vascular drug-eluting stents. On this basis, we screened and optimized the preparation process of DES. We selected polyurethane as drug carriers, and prepared a new type of drug-eluting stent by electrospraying. Then, we investigated stents’mechanical properties and drug’s release behavior in vitro. In the following step, we implanted stents into rabbits’esophagi to investigate stents’in-vivo safeties and antitumor effects.The results show the feasibility of our experimental process, with good mechanical properties. And the stents also demonstrate good in-vitro release behavior, with prolonged sustained release for several days following the short burst release (less than 20h). In addition, the in-vivo experiments reveal good safeties and antitumor effects.