title: Dispersion characteristics of blood during nanoparticle assisted drug delivery process through a permeable microvessel.
abstract: Nanoparticle assisted drug delivery holds considerable promise as a means of next generation of medicine that allows for the intravascular delivery of drugs and contrast agents. We analyze the dispersion characteristics of blood during a nanoparticle-assisted drug delivery process through a permeable microvessel. The contribution of molecular and convective diffusion is based on Taylor's theory of shear dispersion. The aggregation of red blood cells in blood flowing through small tubes (less than 40 μm) leads to the two-phase flow with a core of rouleaux surrounded by a cell-depleted peripheral layer. The core region models as a non-Newtonian Casson fluid and the peripheral region acts as a Newtonian fluid. We investigate the influence of the nanoparticle volume fraction, the permeability of the blood vessel, pressure distribution, yield stress and the radius of the nanoparticle on the effective dispersion. We show that the effective diffusion of the nanoparticles reduces with an increase in nanoparticle volume fraction. The permeability of the blood vessels increases the effective dispersion at the inlet. The present study contributes to the fundamental understanding on how the particulate nature of blood influences nanoparticle delivery, and is of particular significance in nanomedicine design for targeted drug delivery applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 3209, South Africa.
authors.forename: Sachin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.affiliation: TATA Global R & D Division, Jamshedpur 831007, India.
authors.forename: Suvankar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ganguly
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 3209, South Africa.
authors.forename: Precious
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sibanda
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India. Electronic address: suman@mech.iitkgp.ernet.in.
authors.forename: Suman
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chakraborty
mesh_terms: D001692:Biological Transport; D001783:Blood Flow Velocity; D002199:Capillary Permeability; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D018056:Hemorheology; D006801:Humans; D055806:Microvessels / Q000378:metabolism*; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D050997:Nanomedicine; D053758:Nanoparticles