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Thermo-responsive polymers: Applications of smart materials in drug delivery and tissue engineering.
Journal article

Thermo-responsive polymers: Applications of smart materials in drug delivery and tissue engineering.

  • Sponchioni M Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering "Giulio Natta", Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milano, Italy; Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering, ETH Zurich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland. Electronic address: mattia.sponchioni@polimi.it.
  • Capasso Palmiero U Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering, ETH Zurich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Moscatelli D Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering "Giulio Natta", Politecnico di Milano, Via Mancinelli 7, 20131 Milano, Italy.
  • 2019-06-01
Published in:
  • Materials science & engineering. C, Materials for biological applications. - 2019
Biomaterial
Cell culture
Drug delivery
LCST
Smart polymers
Stimuli-responsive
Thermo-responsive
Tissue engineering
UCST
Animals
Drug Delivery Systems
Humans
Micelles
Phase Transition
Polymers
Temperature
Tissue Engineering
English Synthetic polymers are attracting great attention in the last decades for their use in the biomedical field as nanovectors for controlled drug delivery, hydrogels and scaffolds enabling cell growth. Among them, polymers able to respond to environmental stimuli have been recently under growing consideration to impart a "smart" behavior to the final product, which is highly desirable to provide it with a specific dynamic and an advanced function. In particular, thermo-responsive polymers, materials able to undergo a discontinuous phase transition or morphological change in response to a temperature variation, are among the most studied. The development of the so-called controlled radical polymerization techniques has paved the way to a high degree of engineering for the polymer architecture and properties, which in turn brought to a plethora of sophisticated behaviors for these polymers by simply switching the external temperature. These can be exploited in many different fields, from separation to advanced optics and biosensors. The aim of this review is to critically discuss the latest advances in the development of thermo-responsive materials for biomedical applications, including a highly controlled drug delivery, mediation of cell growth and bioseparation. The focus is on the structural and design aspects that are required to exploit such materials for cutting-edge applications in the biomedical field.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/54832
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