Analytics and numerics of drug release tracking

The study of the dependence of fluxes, concentrations and response times, on the characteristic properties of drug delivery polymeric devices, plays an important role in the design of drug release platforms. The aim of this paper is to develop mathematical tools for an in-depth understanding of drug release tracking. The mathematical model presented takes into account the viscoelastic properties of the polymer and the state of the dispersed drug: free or chemically bound to the matrix. For nonlinear chemical bounds the process is described by a nonlinear integro-differential system and the drug release tracking is treated numerically. For linear chemical bounds closed formulas for the fluxes and response times are established in terms of the parameters that characterize the drug and the platform. These formulas provide a set of a priori estimations for the variables of the model. Numerical examples which show the effectiveness of the approach are included. (c) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.