New Jersey Center for Biomaterials

Biomaterials design with its many requirements and variable parameters is an appropriate area for the application of combinatorial methods – at least as an initial screening technique to identify promising polymer structures for further study. A combinatorial approach is most effective when clear correlations between the basic design variables (e.g. biomaterial chemistry and structure) and the performance of the product (e.g., cell-biomaterial interactions) are not available. Obviously, the development of synthetic biomaterials for use in tissue engineering or drug delivery falls into this category. Likewise, in cases where interdependent requirements and a large number of variable parameters result in unacceptably complex experimental designs, the use of combinatorial methods may be the most cost-effective and most rapid approach.

In biomaterials discovery, a combinatorial system of monomers must be polymerized in a parallel fashion such that each polymer is obtained in pure form in its own reaction vessel. This approach has been recently used to create the first combinatorial library of degradable polymers, and represents one of the new materials design options that RESBIO is exploring. Beyond parallel synthesis, RESBIO deals with the important issue of how large numbers of polymers can be effectively evaluated as biomaterials.

Combinatorial approaches are characterized by

the presence of a systematic and clearly defined pathway to identify lead compounds from within a given library of compounds or materials, and
by an overall methodology that increases dramatically the chances for success beyond lucky coincidence.

Our preliminary results validate the above statements and establish convincingly that combinatorial biomaterial libraries offer a superior platform on which to develop important correlations between design and performance/function. The leader of this Core area is Joachim Kohn of Rutgers.