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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Matrix-Assisted Pulsed laser Evaporation-deposited

Rapamycin Thin Films Maintain Antiproliferative

Activity

Rodica Cristescu , Irina Negut , Anita Ioana Visan , Alexander K. Nguyen , Andrew Sachan ,
1
2,4
1
3
1
Peter L. Goering , Douglas B. Chrisey , Roger J. Narayan 2*
5
4
1 Department of Lasers, National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics, P.O. Box MG-36, Bucharest-Magurele,
Romania
2 UNC/NCSU Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
3 Wake Technical Community College, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
4 Center for Devices and Radiological Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
5 Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA
Abstract: Matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE) has many benefits over conventional methods (e.g., dip-coating,
spin coating, and Langmuir–Blodgett dip-coating) for manufacturing coatings containing pharmacologic agents on medical
devices. In particular, the thickness of the coating that is applied to the surface of the medical device can be tightly controlled.
In this study, MAPLE was used to deposit rapamycin-polyvinylpyrrolidone (rapamycin-PVP) thin films onto silicon and
borosilicate optical glass substrates. Alamar Blue and PicoGreen studies were used to measure the metabolic health and DNA
content of L929 mouse fibroblasts as measures of viability and proliferation, respectively. The cells on the MAPLE-deposited
rapamycin-PVP surfaces exhibited 70.6% viability and 53.7% proliferation compared to a borosilicate glass control. These
data indicate that the antiproliferative properties of rapamycin were maintained after MAPLE deposition.
Keywords: Rapamycin, Drug delivery, Matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation, Thin film

*Corresponding Author: Roger J. Narayan, UNC/NCSU Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, Raleigh, North Carolina,
USA; roger_narayan@unc.edu; roger_narayan@unc.edu
Received: March 04, 2019; Accepted: May 16, 2019; Published Online: Janaury 30, 2020

Citation: Cristescu R, Negut I, Visan AI, et al., 2020, Matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation-deposited rapamycin thin films
maintain antiproliferative activity. Int J Bioprint, 6(1):188. DOI: 10.18063/ijb.v6i1.188

1 Introduction to prevent cell proliferation for the treatment of

Rapamycin is a water-insoluble macrocyclic Sjögren’s syndrome, neovascular age-related
triene with antiproliferative properties used in macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema,
and prevention of corneal allograft rejection
.
[4-7]
multiple applications . For example, rapamycin Shah et al. showed that rapamycin eye drops
[1]
has been coated on the surfaces of endovascular were able to increase tear secretion and affect
stents to prevent neointimal hyperplasia, in genes associated with Sjogren’s syndrome in
which the proliferation of smooth muscle cells male non-obese diabetic mice . However, the
[8]
causes a reduction in the lumen of the vessel [2,3] . use of eye drop solutions is associated with low
Another application of interest to the medical bioavailability for delivery of the pharmacologic
community is delivering rapamycin to the eye agent to the ocular tissue due to several issues

© 2020 Cristescu, et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
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