Flexible and elastic porous poly(trimethylene carbonate) structures for use in vascular tissue engineering

Enzymatic Surface Erosion of High Tensile Strength Polycarbonates Based on Natural Phenols

“…Further, the involvement of reactive oxygen species in the erosion of aliphatic polycarbonates was recently suggested by Amsden et al, similar to previous findings by Anderson et al in poly(carbonate urethane)s. 9−11 Recent studies have evaluated the suitability of devices from surface eroding, aliphatic polycarbonates for antibiotic delivery, and implantation in a soft tissue environment for vascular and cardiac tissue engineering. 12−15 Since the material properties of these aliphatic polycarbonates are characterized as flexible and rubbery ( T g lower than 37 °C), it was previously postulated that enzymatic surface erosion requires a flexible polymer backbone that can comply with the enzyme’s active site. 16 Therefore, it is accepted that aromatic polycarbonates and most other currently available biodegradable polymers with Young’s moduli in the GPa range are not susceptible to enzymatic surface erosion, even though amorphous poly(lactic acid) is degradable by Proteinase K. 17,18 Likewise, a wide range of tyrosine-derived polycarbonates were extensively studied by Kohn et al, but were not found to degrade by enzyme-mediated processes.…”

Advanced microstructures based on poly(trimethylene carbonate) : microfabrication and stereolithography

“…[93,[98][99] With regard to applications in tissue engineering, porous structures have been prepared from high molecular weight PTMC. [102][103][104] By phase separation micromolding, microstructured porous PTMC films with pore sizes between 2-20 m and porosities of up to 31 % were obtained. [102] However, changes in the morphology of porous structures were observed during cell culturing when linear PTMC materials were used.…”

“…By crosslinking, the collapse of pores in porous PTMC structures can be avoided. [103] Dimensionally-stable tubular PTMC scaffolds were prepared by gamma-irradiating composites of high molecular weight PTMC and salt or sugar particles, followed by leaching the porogen with water. In this way a flexible and elastic scaffold with an interconnected pore network with average pore sizes of 110 m (salt) or 60 m (sugar) could be obtained.…”

Introduction to Advanced Polymers in Medicine

“…[3,4] Highly porous scaffolds were prepared from poly-(ether)esterurethane copolymer synthesized by co-condensing poly( p-dioxanone)-diol and poly(e-caprolactone)diol with an aliphatic diisocyanate by thermally-induced phase separation (Lü tzow et al [DOI: 10.1002/masy.201100038] describes such a scaffold prepared from PCL using a phase inversion technique, which was intended for applications as an engineered blood vessel. The pore size distributions for some scaffolds were very narrow (e.g.…”