Drug loading of polymer implants by supercritical CO2 assisted impregnation: A review

Drug loaded implants also called drug-eluting implants have proven their benefits over simple implants. Among the developed manufacturing processes, the supercritical CO2 (scCO2) assisted impregnation has attracted growing attention to load Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients into polymer implants since it enables to recover a final implant free of any solvent residue and to operate under mild temperature which is suitable for processing with thermosensitive drugs. This paper is a review of the state-of-the-art and the application of the scCO2 assisted impregnation process to prepare drug-eluting implants. It introduces the process and presents its advantages for biomedical applications. The influences of the characteristics of the implied binary systems and of the experimental conditions on the drug loading are described. Then, the various current applications of this process for manufacturing drug-eluting implants are reviewed. Finally, the new emerging variations of this process are described.