Engineered Biomaterials via Molecular (Nanoscale) Surface Modifications

摘要

Surface modifications of materials to alter or enhance interactions between synthetic materials and biological systems date back to the early 1960's and are, if anything, growing in popularity and success. The rationale for surface modification is centered around the idea that medical device manufacturers can take existing, relatively successful devices and enhance performance by a low cost post-treatment of the device surface. Early surface modifications focused on simple chemistry changes (grafting a hydrogel to a surface, for example) that offered some performance advantage, mostly observed in vitro. A second generation of surface modifications envisioned bioactive agents such as the RGD peptide immobilized to device surfaces.