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Tailoring established polymers for medical applications.

Article Excerpt
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Polymers can be tailored for specific biomedical applications by synthesis, processing or surface modification. Knowledge-based choice of comonomers for acrylonitrile based copolymers influences the interaction profile with specific cell lines and blood. Processing or surface modification of poly(ether imides) results in materials having complex three-dimensional structures and/or specific adsorption profiles. Potential applications are dialysis, gas separation, cell/tissue systems, apheresis, and bioreactors.

Options for enhancement

A common approach in polymer synthesis aims at designing monomers and polymerising these, or combinations of them, through a variety of reaction mechanisms into linear (co)polymers. In addition to the selection of (co)monomers and the synthesis procedure, the versatility of polymers results from various options that exist for their processing and surface modification. In this way, polymers are tailored for specific applications. In particular, the introduction of advanced processing techniques, defined chemical functionalisation, and the systematic investigation of interactions between materials and specific biological systems has extended the innovation potential of established polymers for medical applications.

This article discusses the tailoring of biofunctionalities of selected polymer systems whose syntheses are established and whose main applications are nonmedical. These functionalities include differences in material-cell interactions determined in cell culture tests with certain cell lines to influence cell adhesion and proliferation. (1-7) For example, in co-cultures, reduced adsorption of biological materials (proteins and cells) on the polymer surface, (8-14) and increased effectiveness in the separation of specific components in a biological system (apheresis and gas separation) has been achieved. (15-16)

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Figure 1 shows the compounds discussed in this article. The functionality of poly(ether imide) (PEI) 1 was tailored by processing techniques that resulted in defined complex three-dimensional (3D) shapes. Alternatively, PEI 1 can be tailored by blending with other polymers such as poly(benzimidazol) (PBI) 2 to increase the hydrophilicity of the resulting polymer, or by suitable surface modification. The biofunctionality of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) 3 depends strongly on the type of comonomer and this interdependence is discussed. Typical (co)monomers of acrylonitrile (AN) varying...