Ian Wark Research Institute
ARC Special Research Centre
ARC Special Research Centre
Research Area: Nanomaterials and biomaterials
Degree: Honours
Supervisor: Prof Namita Roy Choudhury
Description: Microporous polymers are of great interest for biomedical, environmental and catalytic applications. Recently, multi-block copolymers consisting of hydrophobic and hydrophilic biodegradable blocks have gained significant interest as environmentally friendly materials, biomaterials, and controlled drug delivery systems.1-3 Such microporous three-dimensional scaffolds play an important role in tissue engineering. Successful tissue regeneration requires strong interaction amongst three components : the cells that restore tissue, a scaffold to hold the cells as they create tissues, and signaling moieties that direct the cells to form the tissue. Of fundamental importance in tissue engineering are the interactions at the cell-polymer interface, which eventually leads to functional substitutes of damaged tissues through complex interactions of living cells, bioactive molecules and three-dimensional porous scaffolds, which support cell attachment, proliferation and differentiation. The physico-chemical nature of the scaffold surface strongly influences the number of cells that attach and their course of differentiation and growth Synthetic, biodegradable polymer scaffolds have been mostly developed based on functional poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid), their blends with other polymers or poly (lactic acid-co-lysine) based comb-like graft copolymers. Although a number of conventional polymers exhibit elastic characteristics but they do not have the required biodegradability. Thus, there exists a distinct need to develop new material with elastic characteristics. The incorporation of elastic biodegradable block into conventional polymer structure can impart not only the strength properties to the scaffold materials, but also biodegradability of the material can be tuned by changing the molar composition.
The aim of this work is to prepare microporous polymer membrane, which is biodegradable in nature. The work will focus on both polymer blends and on biodegradable copolymers, which are elastic in nature. Two different methods will be examined for developing microporosity: solvent-non solvent leaching method and rapid prototyping. The size of the pores will be varied from 80-300 microns. The developed materials will be examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Mechanical properties will be evaluated in terms of strength and also biocompatibility /biodegradability will be examined with molar composition of the blocks.
References
1. K. K. Jette, D. Law, E. A. Schmitt, G. S. Kwon, Pharamceutical Research, 21(7), 1184, 2004.
2. M.H. Huang, H. Suming, D. Dietmar, J. Schantz, C A. Vacanti, C. Braud, M. Vert, J. Biomed. Matl. Res. Pt A, 69 A(3), 417, 2004.
3. Z. K. Zhong, X. Z. S Sun, Polymer, 42, 6961, 2001.
