NOVEL MATERIALS AND SYSTEMS BASED ON SYNTHETIC AND NATURAL POLYMERS TARGETED FOR USE IN THE BIOMEDICAL FIELD

摘要

The increasing demand of materials which respond to a large number of requirements - biocompatibility, degradability with the desired degradation kinetics, non-toxicity of the degradation products, possibility to load the material with biologically active agents and to release them with the desired rate, ability to respond to external stimuli, or suitability as scaffolds for cell and tissue engineering, has led to an important activity in the field of polymeric biomaterials. Several groups of polymers are of great importance for creating novel materials targeted for use in the biomedical field. New hydrolytically and biologically degradable polymers with increased hydrophilicity and high biocompatibility will play a greater role in future for the design of micro- and nanosized drug delivery systems. Recently they have attracted much interest for tissue engineering applications. The requirements for their purity are extremely severe thus implying the necessity of initiators with low toxicity for their synthesis. A great number of biologically active compounds have undesirable side effects, which might be avoided by their attachment to suitable oligomers or polymers. The release of the biologically active compound may be modulated by varying the type of linking bond and its susceptibility to hydrolysis. The attachment of hydrophobic compounds to water-soluble polymer carriers may give to such compounds the possibility to exert their biological activity on the living organism.