Sponsored by: Dental Materials
Description: Recent advances in polymer chemistry have allowed for the expansion of these already versatile materials to even more demanding biomedical applications. Design of new molecules depends on whether degradation must be avoided to assure maintenance of properties while in function, or whether it is desirable to guide new tissue development.
Learning Objectives:
Differentiate between polymer scaffolds with a mere carrier role and the ones with cell-signaling capacities and understand how mechanisms, rates and by-products of degradation influence the environment around them
Identify the major sources of degradation in polymer-based restoratives, its consequences and the already proposed design strategies to circumvent the problem