Computational models for convective and diffusive drug transport in capillaries and tissue

Abstract

In this report we summarize computational models for convective and diffusive drug transport within small blood vessels (capillaries) and tissue. The presented methodology is primarily focused on drug transport via micro-nanoparticles designed for nanotherapeutics in cancer. Our original multiscale hierarchical models couple nanoscale molecular dynamics (MD) and macroscale continuum finite element (FE) discretization. The convective part relies on a FE solution of the solid-fluid interaction problem of moving bodies within fluid, with a remeshing procedure. In diffusion, MD is used to evaluate the effective diffusivity of a porous continuum, where the physico-chemical interaction between transported molecules and microstructural surface is included, and the mass release curves are considered as the constitutive curves. Several representative examples illustrate effectiveness of our methodology and developed software PAK.