Improving scaffold design for biomedical stents used in treating coronary artery disease

The University's Professor Bressloff had already successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of applying theory of probability methods to stent design.

In further research, funded by Arterius Ltd, Professor Bressloff focussed on the multi-disciplinary, multi-objective design optimisation of coronary stents using full three-dimensional structural and fluid mechanics modelling. The key design features which were found to improve the stents’ performance included a graduated cell design with a reinforced closed-cell central region; the shapes of the scaffold crowns; biologically inspired open-cell helical strut configuration; and variable strut width.

These features have made it possible to produce scaffolds with high radial strength and low recoil. Professor Bressloff has been able to reduce strut thickness to 95µm, producing less disruption of the arterial blood flow, compared with the current market-leading BVS.

This research was funded by Arterius Ltd and Innovate UK.

Our new stent design has been granted a patent, for which Arterius Ltd (ArterioSorb®) owns the exploitation rights of the invention.

Arterius Ltd has combined our design with its own polymer science and manufacturing expertise to manufacture numerous scaffolds for bench testing and pre-clinical trials led by one of the most highly esteemed interventional cardiologists in the world, Professor Patrick Serruys.

Very promising results from trials have led to what is hoped to be a final pre-clinical trial prior to human trials later in 2018.

We used the following University of Southampton facilities: High performance computers, including IRIDIS

Find out more about the Engineering and Environment Faculty's many world class facilities.

This research was an interdisciplinary collaboration between Engineering and Medicine within the University of Southampton.

The research was an academic collaboration between the Universities of Bradford and Sheffield. We also worked closely with an external partner in the form of Arterius UK

Bressloff, N. W., 2014, Multi-objective design of a biodegradable coronary artery stent,Cardiovascular and Cardiac Therapeutic Devices in the Springer series "Studies in Mechanobiology, Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials", Ed. Tom Franz, ISBN 978-3-642-53835-3.

Ragkousis, G., Curzen, N. and Bressloff, N. W., 2016. Multi-objective optimisation of stent dilation strategy in a patient-specific coronary artery via computational and surrogate modeling. J. Biomech.. 49(2):205-215.

Bressloff, N. W., Ragkousis, G. and Curzen, N., 2016. Design optimisation of coronary artery stent systems. Annals. Biomed. Eng. 44(2): 357-367.

Pant, S., Limbert, G., Curzen, N. and Bressloff, N. W. , 2011, Multi-objective design optimisation of coronary stents, Biomaterials, 32: 7755-7773. Leading Opinion Paper. 

Pant, S., Bressloff, N. W., Forrester, A. I. J. and Curzen, N., 2010, The influence of strut-connectors in stented vessels : A comparison of pulsatile flow through five different coronary stents, Annals. Biomed. Eng., 38(5): 1893-1907.