Design of A Polymeric Insulin Infusion System For Blood Glucose Control

A polymeric device that is able to reversibly swell and deswell in response to an environmental stimulus has great potential in the application of tight blood glucose control without the necessity of process equipment. The release of insulin from spherical particles has been simulated to show the effects of the number of particles injected, the mass transfer coefficient, the initial insulin loading, and the collapsed particle radius on the time to exhaust all the insulin from within the gel and on the profile of the infusion rate from the device. An analysis was performed in order to determine reasonable ranges for all parameters in order to determine the effects on the release behavior. The work shows that all four parameters affect the infusion profile, but only the particle size and the mass transfer coefficient affect the insulin exhaustion time. Therefore, the device should first be designed based on these parameters, and adjustments in the number of particles injected and the initial loading should be adjusted to give the desired infusion rate profile.