Fabrication and Characterization of Composite Membranes as Drug-Delivering Duraplasty for Stroke Treatment

Abstract

Stroke is a very prevalent issue in the world today with extremely limited treatment options.Load drug delivery and stem cell therapy are areas currently under development for the treatment of stroke. A stroke causes brain swelling and often a decompressive craniectomy is performed to prevent further damage. Then, a duraplasty is implanted to replace the surgically-damaged protective layers around the brain. The purpose of this project was to develop asynthetic duraplasty which can also be used as a drug-delivery system to promote endogenousstem cell therapy to treat stroke. The proposed duraplasty was a composite membrane composed of microspheres embedded in blended biosynthesized cellulose. Both single-walledmicrospheres (SWMS) and double-walled microspheres (DWMS) were fabricated and characterized. Then, they were incorporated into the composite membranes which were further characterized. The DWMS composite membranes were a similar thickness to human duramater. They had the lowest swelling ratio implying that their initial drug release would be lower than the other samples. They were the strongest membranes and they still maintained some elasticity. The DWMS had a higher drug encapsulation efficiency than the SWMS and the DWMS composite membrane drug release profile showed the lowest initial burst and provided a prolonged zero-order release. Therefore, it was determined that the DWMS composite membranes were the ideal drug-releasing duraplasty