Treating a wound or an inflammation directly where it occurs has clear advantages: The active ingredient reaches its target immediately, and there are no negative side effects on uninvolved parts of the body. However, conventional local administration methods reach their limits when it comes to precisely dosing active ingredients over a longer period of time. As soon as an ointment leaves the tube or the injection fluid flows out of the syringe, it is almost impossible to control the amount of active ingredient.
Edith Perret from Empa's Advanced Fibers laboratory in St. Gallen is therefore developing medical fibers with very special "inner values": The polymer fibers enclose a liquid core with therapeutic ingredients. The aim: medical products with special capabilities, e.
g. surgical suture material, wound dressings and textile implants that can administer painkillers, antibiotics or insulin precisely over a longer period of time. Another aim is to achieve individual, patient-specific dosage of the drug in the sense of personalized medicine.
A decisive factor that turns a conventional textile fiber into a medical product is the material of the fiber sheath. The team chose polycaprolactone (PCL), a biocompatible and biodegradable polymer that is already being used successfully in the medical field. The fiber sheath encloses the valuable substance, such as a painkiller or an antibacterial drug, and releases it over time.
Using a unique pilot plant, the researchers produced PCL .
