Drug therapy for vascular disease has been promoted to inhibit angiogenesis in atherosclerotic plaques and prevent restenosis following surgical intervention. This paper investigates the arterial depositions and distribution of PEG-functionalized magnetic nanocomposite clusters (PEG_MNCs) following local delivery in a stented artery model in a uniform magnetic field produced by a regionally positioned external permanent magnet; also, the PEG_MNCs aggregation or chain formation in and around the implanted stent. The central concept is to employ one external permanent magnet system, which produces enough magnetic field to magnetize and guide the magnetic nanoclusters in the stented artery region. At room temperature (25 °C), optical microscopy of the suspension model's aggregation process was carried out in the external magnetic field. According to the optical microscopy pictures, the PEG_MNC particles form long linear aggregates due to dipolar magnetic interactions when there is an external magnetic field. During magnetic particle targeting, 20 mL of the model suspensions are injected (at a constant flow rate of 39.6 mL/min for the period of 30 s) by the syringe pump in the mean flow (flow velocity is Um = 0.25 m/s, corresponding to the Reynolds number of Re = 232) into the stented artery model. The PEG_MNC clusters are attracted by the magnetic forces (generated by the permanent external magnet) and captured around the stent struts and the bottom artery wall before and inside the implanted stent. The colloidal interaction among the MNC clusters was investigated by calculating the electrostatic repulsion, van der Waals and magnetic dipole-dipole energies. The current work offers essential details about PEG_MNCs aggregation and chain structure development in the presence of an external magnetic field and the process underlying this structure formation.
Keywords: functional coating; magnetoresponsive nanocomposite; nanomedicine; particle aggregation; particle targeting; stent targeting.