Biocompatibility molecular weight

Probably the most promising polymeric drug carrier system involves polysaccharide molecules. These are natural polymers and are often biodegradable to products that are useful to the host or easily eliminated by the host. Dextrans have been the most extensively used polysaccharide for macromolecular prodrug preparations (79). These materials are biocompatible and the in vivo fate is directly related to their molecular weight. Moreover these macromolecules can be easily targetted to the hepatocytes with D-mannose or L-fucose (20). 

Another important property which affects biocompatibility is permeability to low molecular weight solutes, since it is usually required that all extractable materials be leached from the device prior to use. These extractables include lower molecular weight species such as unreacted monomer, residual initiators,... 

There is a current tendency to develop carriers on the basis of polypeptides and other polymeric carriers with rather simple structures. For instance, polylysines, polyhydrox-ymethyl-acrylamide and polylactic add material with variations in charge and molecular weight can be tailor-made and equipped with clustered recognition sites. The biocompatibility of such carrier systems with chronic dosing should, however, be more clearly established. 

Similarly, a turn-over frequency (TON) of 227 of the polymerization process was distinctly low for 77d with [M]/[I] = 350, at 110 °C for 6 h, using in the melt polymerization conditions. Biocompatible calcium complex 77a used as catalyst at 110 °C produced in 30 min PLAs with high molecular weight (65,000-110,600) and narrow polydispersities (1.02-1.05) using [M]/[I] = 350-700. It is worthy of note that complex 77a displayed a notable heteroselectivity (probability of racemic linkages between monomers, = 0.73, see Sect. 4.2) in polymerization of rac-lactide in THF at 33 °C. Data on the aforementioned calcium initiators and their lactide polymerization are listed in Table 4. 

Surface modification can be achieved by the surface derivatization of functional-group-bearing low-molecular-weight substances, the grafting of polymer to and from the surface and amphiphilic polymer coating. The main theme of this article is focused on initiator-transfer-terminator (iniferter)-based grafting-from-surface and derivatization-on-surface approaches aiming at precision surface architectures, which are primary determinants of the biocompatibility of medical devices. 

Protein drugs have been formulated with excipients intended to stabilize the protein in the milieu of the pharmaceutical product. It has long been known that a variety of low molecular weight compounds have the effect of preserving the activity of proteins and enzymes in solution. These include simple salts, buffer salts and polyhydroxylated compounds such as glycerol, mannitol, sucrose and polyethylene glycols. Certain biocompatible polymers have also been applied for this purpose such as polysaccharides and synthetic polymers such as polyvinyl pyrrolidone and even nonionic surfactants. 

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