Recently, the team of Professor Guangyin Yuan from the School of Materials Science and Engineering of Shanghai Jiaotong University published the latest research results on the processing of degradable zinc alloy micro-tubes and vascular stents online in Acta Biomaterialia. The paper title is "Fabrication and characterization of biodegradable Zn-Cu- Mn alloy micro-tubes and vascular stents: microstructure, texture, mechanical properties and corrosion behavior”. The link to the paper is https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2022.07.049. Doctoral student Jiang Jimiao is the first author, and Professor Yuan Guangyin and associate researcher Huang Hua are the co-corresponding authors. This research work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program Project (2018YFE0115400) and the General Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51971134).
Biodegradable stents were developed to overcome the side effects of permanent vascular stents caused by long-term retention, which can provide temporary and sufficient mechanical support for diseased vessels to ensure vessel patency. They will degrade and be absorbed by the body over time after restoring vessel function. Recently, Zn and its alloys have received extensive attention as a new promising biodegradable material due to its satisfactory physiological degradable behavior, and most prior studies have focused on Zn and its alloys in the form of plates, rods and wires. However, only a few studies on Zn-based micro-tubes for vascular stents have been reported so far. Vascular stents are usually manufactured by laser cutting from micro-tubes. This study aimed to fabricate biodegradable Zn-2.0Cu-0.5Mn alloy micro-tubes (outer diameter: 3.0 mm, thickness: 160 μm) and vascular stents (length: 16 mm, outer diameter: ~2.83 mm, thickness: ~125 μm) with high dimensional accuracy and suitable mechanical properties, and to investigate their microstructure, texture, mechanical properties and corrosion behavior. As-drawn micro-tube exhibited suitable mechanical properties with an ultimate tensile strength of about 298 MPa and elongation of about 26% as a stent material. Moreover, the processed stent with a thickness of about 125 μm possessed sufficient radial strength of about 150 kPa and good balloon expandability. These results indicated that biodegradable Zn-2.0Cu-0.5Mn alloy is a promising vascular stent material candidate, and the procedure for processing the micro-tube and stent is practical and effective.
The prepared vascular stent was used in pig coronary artery in vivo experiments to verify its in vivo degradation and biocompatibility. The current progress results are good, and the relevant results will be reported in the future.
In recent years, with the support of Academician Ding Wenjiang, Professor Yuan Guangyin's team has achieved a series of innovative research results in degradable medical magnesium and zinc alloys.
School of Materials Science and Engineering, SJTU
Original Link: https://en.smse.sjtu.edu.cn/news/detail.aspx?id=118