Synthetic Polymers for Biomedical Applications
1Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Stuttgart, Germany
2Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
3Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
4Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
Synthetic Polymers for Biomedical Applications
Description
Polymers have been emerging to be the cornerstones for therapeutic applications as well as the largest and versatile class of biomaterials. Synthetic polymers can be designed and synthesized with a broad variety of structures and appropriate physical and chemical properties for suitable applications. Therefore, they are of increasing interest in a wide range of biomedical applications as diverse as tissue engineering, drug delivery, therapeutics, diagnostics, and so on.
Since the last decade, the methods of polymer synthesis, processing, and characterization are developing rapidly, which bring both challenges and opportunities to design novel polymeric biomaterials as well as to understand the biological behaviors between biological systems and polymeric materials. For example, 3D printing offers more accurate scaffold for tissue engineering; molecularly targeted therapy becomes one of the major modalities for cancer treatment; extracellular matrix mimics better combine the physical cues and chemical cues to direct cellular differentiation. However, it becomes more and more urgent to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the newly developed technologies and the relevant products and to make new standards and benchmarks to meet the growing demand of the biomedical applications.
Therefore, the editors are pleased to launch this special issue and invite researchers to contribute their original papers and reviews in the field of functional polymers for biomedical applications.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Polymeric biomaterials
- Hydrogels as biomaterial scaffolds
- Delivery of drugs, genes, or vaccines
- Polymeric biointerphase
- Biocompatibility of polymeric materials
- Interactions between biological systems and the polymeric materials
- Characterization of the polymeric biomaterials
- Diagnostics and bioimaging
- Biosensors
- Extracellular matrix mimics