Biomedical polymers overview

Biomedical Polymers An Overview Chitosan conlrol 5% nHA in chitosan 10% nHA in chitosan 20% nHA in chitosan... 

Obviously it would not be possible to cover every detail of biomedical polymers in this paper or even in a single book. The basic purpose of this paper is to overview the various uses of pol3nners in medically related applications and to note some of the advantages and limitations in these uses. Table I shows some typical biomedical polymer applications. The forty five applications listed in Table I do not comprise every possible application, nor do they even cover all the areas under current research, but they merely indicate the wide range of applications being studied. According to statistics from the University Hospitals of Case-Western Reserve University, 9-15% of the autopsies reveal some t3 pe of an implant in the patient (33). If these statistics apply to the USA as a whole, this would mean that 20-34 million people would have some type of implant, exclusive of dental fillings, dentures and contact... 

Kim, Y. H. 2002. An overview on biodegradable polymers in biomedical application. In ICS-UNIDO Edp EGM, Trieste, Italy. 

This contribution will provide a review of polylectrolytes as biomaterials, with emphasis on recent developments. The first section will provide an overview of methods of synthesizing polyelectrolytes in the structures that are most commonly employed for biomedical applications linear polymers, crosslinked networks, and polymer grafts. In the remaining sections, the salient features of polyelectrolyte thermodynamics and the applications of polyelectrolytes for dental adhesives and restoratives, controlled release devices, polymeric drugs, prodrugs, or adjuvants, and biocompatibilizers will be discussed. These topics have been reviewed in the past, therefore previous reviews are cited and only the recent developments are considered here. 

The specific constraints and requirements of continuous-flow NMR will be explained in the first chapter, whereas specific applications, such as biomedical and natural product analysis, LC-NMR-MS and LC-NMR in an industrial environment, together with polymer analysis, will be discussed separately. Thus, the reader will obtain a broad overview of the application power of LC-NMR and the benefits of its use. He/She will also be introduced to the pitfalls of this technique. Special attention will be given to the exciting newer coupled techniques such as SFC-NMR and capillary HPLC-NMR. However, new emerging future developments will also be discussed thoroughly. 

Basically, the book can be subdivided into three parts. In the first part the fundamentals of the instrumentation for infrared and Raman imaging and mapping and an overview on the chemometric tools for image analysis are covered in two introductory chapters. The second part comprises the chapters 3-9 and describes a wide variety of applications ranging from biomedical via food and agriculture to polymers and pharmaceuticals. Some historical insights are given as well. In the third part the chapters 10-15 cover special methodical developments and their utiHty in specific fields. 

Dynamic mechanical techniques have been widely employed in the polymer and related industries however, the applications of such techniques for the characterization of pharmaceutical and certain biomedical systems have not received similar attention. Therefore, in this section, an overview of reported and future applications of these techniques for the characterization of pharmaceutical and biomedical systems is provided. 

Chemical and physical characteristics of the polymeric materials will be critical in determining the performance of the overall system. Therefore, Appendix A includes an overview of the important aspects of the classes of polymers that are most often used in biomedical applications. 

Scholz, C. Poly(y -hydroxyaIkanoates) as potential biomedical materials an overview. In Scholz, C., Gross, R.A. (eds.) Polymers from renewable lesources-biopolymers and biocatalysis, ACS series, vol. 764, pp. 328-334 (2000)... 

Consequently, the scope of this chapter is to give an overview on the current developments of biomimetic polymers in biomedical applications including an introduction on cell-biomaterial interactions, applied biomimetic strategies, and synthesis and modification techniques for seleaed natural and S3mthetic polymers. Examples of recent studies using... 

The aim of this chapter is to give a brief selective overview of typical biomedical areas where cationic polymers can be employed. The use of cationic polymers in tissue engineering is a high priority topic in this chapter and several aspects on this phenomenon are given related to this is the potential of cationic hydrogels for medical and pharmaceutical applications. The importance of cationic polymers and copolymers as non-viral vectors in gene therapy is described, as well as how micelles and vesicles based on cationic polypeptides can form nanostructures by self-assembly. The potential of cationic polymers for drug delivery applications is also elucidated. 

Phosphorus-Based Polymers From Synthesis to Applications aims at providing a broad overview of recent developments in the synthesis and applications of phosphorus-containing polymers. Over the last few years, more and more research papers have been published on this field. Polymerization of different kinds of phosphorus-based monomers using various methods has been carried out (meth)acrylates, (meth)acrylamides, vinylphosphonic acid, styrenic, and allylic monomers. The resulting phosphorus-based materials have found applications in different domains biomedical, complexation with metals, fire retardant additives, fuel cell membranes, etc. 

Chapter 9 by Wentrup-Byrne et al. reports on the biomedical applications of phosphorus-containing polymers such as poly[2-(aciyloylo g )ethyl phosphate], poly[2-(methacryloylo Q )ethyl phosphate], and polyphosphoesters, especially tissue repair and regeneration, medical device development, and tissue engineering. A broad overview is achieved, as applications considered include cardiovascular, ophthalmological, drug and gene deliveiy, as well as orthopedics and bone-interface repair, their surface chemistiy, and the subsequent biomineralization proeesses. 

Figure 9.1 General overview of the biomedical applications of phosphorus-containing polymers. See Schemes 9.1 and 9.2.

In this volume the basic principles of shape-memory polymers and shape-memory polymer composites, as well as the related characterization methods are described. Furthermore, an overview of the application spectrum for SMP is presented, whereby special emphasis is given to biomedical applications. 

Although the focus of this book is on the synthetic degradable polymers, in this chapter, we wiU give an overview of the synthetic as well as natural polymers used for various biomedical applications. The subsequent chapters will discuss in detail the synthesis and processing methodologies of the synthetic polymers. 

Polymers can be classified in various ways. The most obvious is to think of them as either being natural or synthetic. This is the classification used in this book. Alternative ways of classification are based on their use (structural and non-stmctural polymers) and their characteristics (degradable and non-degradable polymers). These aspects are discussed in the first chapter. This chapter will give an overview of the synthetic and natural degradable polymers. However, overall, the book focuses on the synthetic polymers used for biomedical appfications. Amongst the class of synthetic polymers, this chapter will discuss polyesters, polycarbonates, and polyurethanes, the most commonly used synthetics polymers for biomedical appfications. 

We hope that this small book will provide an overview of the use of synthetic polymers in various biomedical applications for a beginner and pave the way for a more detailed study using the resources cited in the book. In closing, we want to thank the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, for providing the resources to write this chapter and to Dr. Mayra Castro (Springer Applied Science, Germany) for her kind invitation to contribute this manuscript. 

---