Bioresorbable urological stent systems based on natural polymers

Urinary stents are commonly applied in urology to prevent blockage in the ureter. The blockage of urine flow is, in most of the cases, temporary and the indwelling time is limited to a short period of time. In this sense, major advantages would be foreseen by the development of bioresorbable stents. The technology proposed relies in the development of bioresorbable urological stents produced from natural origin polymers, and designed to meet the patient needs and to avoiding a second surgery for stent removal. The stents will be formed from an aqueous solution of biopolymer which is gelled using a crosslinking agent and subsequently dried. Although out of the scope of this project we foresee that the mild processing conditions will further allow the incorporation of active compounds and the stents could also be used as drug/protein-delivery platforms. In this project, the development of the stents and in vitro characterization was successfully performed. At the moment, a first assessment of in vivo evaluation of the materials developed was studied using a female pig model. The ureteral stent when implanted was not disrupted when placed through the urethra and the bladder, nonetheless, future work requires the optimization of the mechanical properties of the stent in order to pass the ureteral orifices and settle in the ureter. From the experiments performs we concluded that the biodegradable ureteral stents developed can be implanted following the surgical procedure performed daily in clinics and no major changes to the procedure are required