Bioresorbable polymers scaffolds for

Processing and production of bioresorbable polymer scaffolds for tissue engineering... 

Abstract The main families of synthetic bioresorbable polymers, which find wide medical application as temporary mechanical supports such as sutures, as tissue engineering scaffolds, and as mediators of release rate for the controlled release of drugs are outlined. The physical and chemical mechanisms by which they degrade are discussed and the factors that can affect their rates of degradation are examined. 

Synthetic bioresorbable polymers offer several advantages over namral polymers in the development of TE scaffolds (1) they can be produced on a large scale, at low cost, and in a reproducible manner (2) they have no risk of immunogenicity (3) they are easier to process and (4) their properties and degradation kinetics can be easily tailored for the required application. Main drawbacks are that they are less biocompatible than natural polymers and they typically do not present cell recognition sites. In addition, the degradation products of many of them are not natural metabolites and might cause problems if accumulated. 

Another interesting bioresorbable polymer that has been investigated to develop highly porous scaffolds for TE is Degrapol, an elastic poly(ester methane) (Saad et al., 1997). 

Bioresorbable polymers for next-generation cardiac scaffolds... 

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