Lubricious hydrogel surface modification

A shaped medical device containing at least one surface portion, said medical device comprising:

• a shaped medical device containing a body having at least one surface portion;
• a lubricious and adherent hydrophilic vinyl addition copolymer coating disposed on said surface portion, said copolymer coating including a hydrophilic vinyl addition copolymer containing pendant primary amine functionality and pendant tertiary amine functionality, said coating being covalently bonded via its pendant primary amine groups to a hydroxy-functionalized surface portion of said medical device;
• and
• said lubricious and adherent coating is a linear hydrophilic vinyl additional copolymer including the following units:
• ##STR4## wherein R.sup.1 is an H or C.sub.1 -C.sub.4 alkyl group, R.sup.2 and R.sup.5 are each independently selected from a divalent aliphatic, cycloaliphatic, aromatic or alkylaromatic groups, R.sup.3 and R.sup.4 are each independently selected from H or C.sub.1 -C.sub.4 alkyl groups, R.sup.6, R.sup.7 and R.sup.8 are each independently selected from hydrogen, hydroxy, halogen, alkoxy, and acyloxy groups, said copolymer having a number average molecular weight of less than about 30,000.

A method for making a lubricious bound coating on a medical device, said method comprising:

• forming a reaction mixture including at least one hydrophilic vinyl addition polymerizable monomer having pendant primary amine functionality and at least one vinyl addition polymerizable monomer having pendant tertiary amine functionality, in an aqueous solution containing a vinyl addition polymerization catalyst;
• heating the reaction mixture to commence polymerization of said monomers and permitting addition polymerization to proceed until formation of a solution containing a linear, hydrophilic vinyl addition copolymer including a vinyl addition backbone having randomly distributed units with pendant primary amine functionality and pendant tertiary amine functionality and having a number average molecular weight of less than about 30,000 is substantially complete;
• and
• contacting an epoxy-functionalized surface portion of a medical device to be coated with the copolymer solution to permit covalent bonding to proceed between pendant primary amine groups on the copolymer and epoxy groups present on the surface portion to covalently bond the hydrophilic copolymer coating to said surface portion.