Biopolymers and Bioplastics

Role of polymers in biological systems

In recent years there are researches emerging that intend to diminish the boundary between polymer science and biology. The interest is fast growing and few understanding of how to generalize statistical and continuum field theories to observe the phenomena that are more than equilibrium. This will result to a theme that has repeatedly observed in biology how are structures organized or self-organized within the organism at a specific spot, from simple macromolecule precursers to complex architectures. This is a challenging task but also has tremendous opportunities. The research ideas can take two different paths; biology introduces to new problems that has not been traditional on the other hand polymer science utilizes its various tools that provide a starting point to search for issues in biology. Tissue engineering is a field that uses polymers in biology which is involved in the restoration, maintainaince, or improvement of tissue functions that have become defective or have been lost due to pathological conditions, either by developing substitutes or by completely reconstructing new tissues. Scaffold design and fabrication are one of the significant areas of biomaterial research and it is necessory for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Polymers are being widely used as biomaterials for the preperation of medical device and tissue-engineering scaffolds. Polymeric scaffolds due to their unique properties such as high surface-to-volume ratio, high porosity with very small pore size, biodegradation, and mechanical property are drawing good amount of attention. They possess unique advantages of biocompatibility, versatility of chemistry, and the biological properties which are a neccessity in tissue engineering and organ substitution. Extensive progress has been made in the use of biocompatible dendrimers for treatment of cancer and their use as delivery systems for anticancer drugs like cisplatin and doxorubicin, as well as agents for both boron neutron capture therapy and photodynamic therapy. Polymers are also applied in bone replacement.