PI: Fei Tian, Co-PI: Henry Du Institute: Stevens Institute of Technology
Proposal Title Facile Lab-on-Fiber Opto-fluidic Platform for the Study of Therapeutic-Eluting Polyelectrolyte Coatings
Project Goals
To develop an innovative lab-on-fiber platform for real-time and physiologically relevant measurements of the release profile of drug-laden polymer coatings.
Therapeutic polymer coatings on medical implants and in tissue scaffolds for controlled release are increasingly being explored as a patient-care strategy and in regenerative medicine. Clinical translation of these polymers requires controlled and sustained drug release with dose profiles tailored to specific needs. The lack of a robust method to study the release profiles in physiologically relevant microenvironment hinders the development of effective drug-laden polymer coatings and their clinical utilization. This project aims to design, fabricate and demonstrate a facile and innovative all-optical lab-on-fiber platform mimicking physiologically relevant microenvironment for real-time study of therapeutic release from antibiotic drug- and growth factor-containing polymer coatings. The lab-on-fiber platform, consisting in essence of a fiber-optic grating sensor coated with therapeutic polymer enclosed in a glass capillary, holds excellent promise to be a robust and broadly adoptable testbed to meet the critical need in the development and evaluation of therapeutic-eluting polymer coatings. This project will also provide a fertile training ground for students at doctoral, undergraduate, as well as high-school levels with significant opportunities to interact with collaborators at MIT and the Academy of Sciences of The Czech Republic in Prague.
This project aims to design, fabricate and demonstrate a facile and innovative all-optical lab-on-fiber optofluidic platform (LOFOP) mimicking physiologically relevant microenvironment for in-situ time-resolved study of the kinetics and mechanism of therapeutic release from antibiotic drug- and growth factor-laden polyelectrolyte coatings deposited by layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly. The project tackles a major challenge faced by the scientific community in the ability, or lack of, to measure the release profiles of therapeutic polymer coatings in situ under physiologically relevant conditions, especially pertaining to fluid flow and microenvironment in order for their translation as clinical solutions. The LOFOP has as its core a long-period fiber grating (LPG) structure sensitive to LbL events at sub-monolayer resolution. LPG coated with therapeutic-eluting LbL polyelectrolytes will be integrated with glass capillary to mimic physiologically relevant fluid flow in a microenvironment. The LOFOP approach represents a transformative advancement from the commonly used test tube method to a simple and yet powerful optofluidic technique for time-resolved and in-situ release measurements. The aims of the project will be achieved by (1) numerical simulation using full-vector mode solver to select cladding modes most sensitive to LbL processes and to guide LPG fabrication; (2) LbL deposition of antibiotic- and growth factor-eluting polymer coatings on LPG; and (3) in-situ release measurements of the antibiotic and growth factor with physiologically relevant fluid flow rate and spacing as parameters. The results will be fitted with established release models to ascertain the release mechanisms. Feasibility of the LOFOP for simultaneous evaluation of drug release and ensuing bacterial response will be explored by integrating LPG containing antibiotic-eluting coating with glass capillary, the inner wall of which is cultured with S. aureus biofilm. Successful outcome of the project is expected to significantly advance the frontier of both LOF optofluidics and LbL for biomedical applications and beyond.
