The Need

PCL has been a key material in modern medicine and advanced medical device manufacturing. Able to degrade away slowly in the body without producing toxic residues, PCL has been used for medical implants and controlled drug release over time. However, PCL is inherently hydrophobic and has set degradation kinetics that cannot be adjusted, limiting its relevance in other biomedical applications such as tissue engineering or drug delivery when PCL’s degradation rate is too fast or slow.

The Technology

OSU faculty have developed a way to expand and adjust PCL’s material properties; crystallinity, thermal behavior, hydrophilicity, and degradation rates. By modifying the PCL monomer chemical structure before polymerization occurs the physical characteristics of PCL can be tuned to the end application need. Additionally, by shifting performance control upstream to the polymer chemistry itself, manufacturers are enabled to achieve application specific material without increasing formulation complexity or manufacturing processes. Polymerization of these modified PCL monomers is still in line with established industrial polymerization processes.

Benefits/Advantages

Our approach allows one to tune how dense and ordered (firmer, crystalline) or disordered (soft, permeable) the final polymer is, unlocking the ability to modify numerous physical and chemical properties like:

• Thermal behavior: create polymers that transition between rigid and flexible states depending on temperature, opening the door to temperature triggered drug release, soft tissue implants and shape-memory devices.
• Hydrophilicity: produce polymers that are more hydrophilic or amphiphilic, unlocking applications in water-based biological environments (e.g. payload delivery via vesicle, cell adhesion in tissue engineering scaffolding).
• Biodegradation rates: biodegradation rates should be matched to the application, not the other way around. Adjust acute or chronic payload secretion to match the correct dosage treatment. Create structural scaffolding for cells or sutures that won’t disappear prematurely or long after healing is done.