Degradable materials are very important in fabricating biomedical devices. After implantation, they do not need to be removed; rather, under ideal conditions, the implant site repairs itself while the device is resorbed. In comparison, nondegradable materials often need to be surgically removed after their purpose has been achieved, thus subjecting the patient to a second surgery that potentially exposes them to more complications. Degradable devices can be used in a broad range of applications such as vascular stents, vascular bypass grafts, bone fixation devices, and soft tissue replacement scaffolds.
Degradable biomaterials have a wide range of requirements depending on the particular clinical application. Parameters such as chemical structure, composition, porosity, and device geometry determine surface and bulk properties of an implant, and thus, they are critical to the selection of the material.
One important characteristic of degradable biomaterials is their water uptake versus time, as it is crucial for the determination of how long a polymeric device will reside in the body before erosion leads to the ultimate removal of the device from the implant site. Water uptake affects degradation, swelling, mechanical, and adhesive properties; also it determines drug stability, drug release profile, and biological response.
Current methods used to measure water uptake versus time are labor intensive and time consuming. Depending on the polymer, water uptake can take days to weeks to equilibrate. There are potentially very large libraries of polymeric biomaterials, which make it impractical to measure these parameters experimentally for each polymer.
Computational modeling is a useful tool to minimize the number of experiments needed to characterize a polymer library.
Our research has two objectives: (i) the development of computational models for water uptake versus time based upon experimental data from a small subset of polymers in a library and (ii) the application of these models to predict water uptake for an entire library of polymers. The main challenge of this research is to model and predict properties that change over time with particular kinetics using a small set of experimental data.
As a model system, a library of L-tyrosine-derived polyarylates was used. Kohn and collaborators used this library to discover promising lead polymers for several medical applications, such as bone pins, hernia repair devices, and an antibacterial sleeve that protects recipients of implanted cardiac assist devices from potentially life-threatening infections.
Changes in polymer backbone or pendent chain length affect polymer properties such as and hydrophobicity. In this study we investigate the effect of polymer backbone and pendent chain on the water uptake profiles of polymer films.
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Loreto Valenzuela
