Modelling of pharmacokinetics into ischemic heart tissue from an implantable, replenishable therapy reservoir

Precisely controlled delivery of drugs, bioagents and cells directly to the heart has the potential to dramatically improve regenerative cardiac therapy for ischaemic heart failure. Likewise, localised therapy delivery to ischaemic tissue can increase retention at the target site and reduce adverse systemic effects. 

We will use computational modelling to simulate drug release kinetics from a replenishable indwelling device (the therapeutic pericardiuim or ‘thericardium’) across a porous membrane to heart tissue to optimise the device’s design and provide insights into the functionality of the implantable drug delivery system. The key goals will be to experimentally characterise the drug transport and mechanical properties of this device for input into a computational model. We will create a multi-scale computational model that can predict therapy concentration in the tissue to allow the device to give accurate dosing and timing of therapy replenishments and the validation of the computational model compared with existing pre-clinical data.

Future work will include further pre-clinical studies to implement the enhanced design of the drug delivery device.