Treatment of textile surfaces by plasma technology for biomedical applications
- Autores: Cedric Pierre Labay
- Directores de la Tesis: José M. Canal Arias (dir. tes.), Cristina Canal Barnils (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2014
- Idioma: inglés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Francisco Javier Gil Mur (presid.), María Ángeles Bonet Aracil (secret.), Farzaneh Arefi Khonsari (voc.)
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
Medical applications of technical textiles are an expanding field of research. One of the added values of these new materials would be that they were suitable to contain and release active compounds in a controlled and sustained manner. Drug incorporation and release from synthetic fibers is related to the interaction of the drug with the polymer and probably greatly depends on the surface chemistry of the fiber. Plasma technology is a tool that enables to modify physical and chemical properties of the first nanometers of the fibers without affecting the bulk of the material. Applied to the medical textile field, plasma treatment of polymer fibres can lead to the design of new textile-based drug delivery systems. The novelty of this PhD. Thesis rests upon the modification of the drug/fiber interactions by plasma treatment to allow the modulation of the loading and the release of active principles (pharmaceutics and cosmetics) from the textile-based drug delivery systems, without requiring the use of any further chemicals. This Thesis aims at the development of two families of textile-based drug delivery systems, based on a novel surface functionalization by plasma treatment, with suitable characteristics for topical use as medical devices, or for clinical application in soft tissue repair. It is therefore organized in two distinct parts. In both parts of this thesis a general scheme has been followed: we have investigated the surface modification of textile materials with different types of plasmas (atmospheric and low pressure plasma), characterizing the surface modifications achieved by different complementary techniques. The effects of the plasma treatment have been evaluated on the subsequent incorporation of active pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. In the last step, the drug release to a standard medium has been studied by "in-vitro" dissolution assays. The first part is focused on medical textiles for topical application. Therein, the surface modification of polyamide 66 elastic-compressive knitted fabrics has been studied by corona plasma and low pressure plasma. The work has studied in parallel laboratory prepared fabrics and industrially finished fabrics, with views on the potential implementation of the proposed process in the textile industrial chain. Plasma treatment improved the release kinetics of anti-inflammatory pharmaceutic (ketoprofen) and of lipolitic cosmetic (caffeine) active principles, loaded in the polyamide 66 fabrics. A fundamental study comparing three different molecules of the same chemical family (caffeine, theobromine, pentoxifylline) has been performed regarding loading and release of the drugs. The second part focuses on textiles used as implants for soft tissue repair (e.g. hernia). The fiber surface of a polypropylene mesh has been modified by corona plasma and low-pressure plasma. The treatments evaluated had a major effect on the loading of antibiotic (ampicillin) by increasing it three times. As in vitro release kinetics of the drug was very fast, coating of the ampillicin-loaded polypropylene meshes with a biocompatible polymer was investigated by plasma polymerization.
