Novel Biliary Stent Coating Preventing Complications and Improve Stent Patency
BILECOAT aims to develop a novel coating for biliary stents to mitigate infection risks, bacterial biofilm formation, biliary fouling buildup all of which contribute to stent restenosis and can potentially lead to recurrent biliary obstruction. BILECOAT, a collaboration between LipoCoat and University of Twente (UT), introduces a next- generation tethered and polymerized lipid coating on biliary stents. Early laboratory data demonstrated that polymerized diacetylene lipids reduce fouling by >85%, and when integrated with novel tethering this offers foundation for industrial development of biliary stent surface modification.
Across the EU, an estimated 250,000 biliary stent procedures are performed each year, driven by gallstone disease, benign strictures, and hepatopancreatobiliary malignancies. With a conservative clinical estimate that 30–40% of patients require at least one repeat ERCP due to stent occlusion or related complications, this corresponds to approximately 85,000–90,000 occlusion-driven re interventions annually. Given that a single occlusion event, including repeat ERCP, hospitalisation, and complication management, typically generates costs of approximately € 10,000, the direct annual EU healthcare burden exceeds € 0.9 billion, rising to ±€ 1.1–1.2 billion when including extended care, imaging, and follow-up. If BILECOAT successfully reduces occlusion-driven re-interventions by even 20–30%, the potential savings for European healthcare systems would be on the order of € 200–300 million per year, in addition to substantial reductions in endoscopy workload, unscheduled admissions, and patient morbidity.
LipoCoat has developed bio-inspired lipid coatings that strongly reduce fouling on medical devices. This project advances the technology from an early prototype (TRL 3/4) to a validated demonstrator at TRL6. A robust tethering strategy will be developed to permanently attach the polymerized coating to the biliary stent surface, followed by structured verification and validation testing. By extending stent patency and reduce number of replacement procedures, BILECOAT has the potential to reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes, and enable other gasto-intestinal (GI) applications.
