The application of ink-jet technology for the coating and loading of drug-eluting stents.

The combination of drugs with devices, where locally delivered drugs elute from the device, has demonstrated distinct advantages over therapies involving systemic or local drugs and devices administered separately. Drug-eluting stents are most notable. Ink jet technology offers unique advantages for the coating of very small medical devices with drugs and drug-coating combinations, especially in cases where the active pharmaceutical agent is very expensive to produce and wastage is to be minimized. For medical devices such as drug-containing stents, the advantages of ink-jet technology result from the controllable and reproducible nature of the droplets in the jet stream and the ability to direct the stream to exact locations on the device surfaces. Programmed target deliveries of 100 microg drug, a typical dose for a small stent, into cuvettes gave a standard deviation (SD) of dose of 0.6 microg. Jetting on coated, uncut stent tubes exhibited 100% capture efficiency with a 1.8 microg SD for a 137 microg dose. In preliminary studies, continuous jetting on stents can yield efficiencies up to 91% and coefficients of variation as low as 2%. These results indicate that ink-jet technology may provide significant improvement in drug loading efficiency over conventional coating methods.