Tissue Engineering

Abstract: Professor Kohn's view on the future of biodegradable polymers There is much excitement around the potential capabilities of synthetic biodegradable polymers and the effect they will have on the design and function of implanted devices. Whether they are used to facilitate a controlled drug delivery function within the body or to regenerate lost tissue, these materials are crucial to the development of a wide range of new medical applications. The current trend suggests that, in the next few years, permanent prosthetic implants will give way to fully degradable devices.

The year 1969 saw the first approval of a synthetic degradable suture made of poly(glycolic acid). In 1971, an improved suture, containing poly(lactic acid) was approved. Then there was a long wait until polydioxanone appeared as a material for biodegradable sutures and bone pins in the early 1980s. The next fundamental advance came in 1996 with the development of an implantable drug delivery system using degradable polyanhydrides. The history of synthetic degradable polymers shows that the rate of development is very slow - maybe one fundamentally new polymer system per decade. Obviously, this rate of development must accelerate to allow the wide use of synthetic degradable in the manufacture of medical implants.

One of the important goals of our research is to increase the number of viable biomaterials candidates and to accelerate their development into medical devices that alleviate the pain and suffering of patients throughout the world. Recently, we were able to celebrate a major breakthrough. http://www.njbiomaterials.org/web/index.php?p=flabs&s=66332

Bio: Professor Joachim Kohn is the Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Orthopedics at the New Jersey Medical School. He has served as Director of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials since its establishment in 1997. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering (IUSBSE). He is the principal investigator of several leading federally-funded R&D programs: NIH-funded postdoctoral training program in Tissue Engineering, NSF-funded Partnership for Innovation designed to explore new plant-synthetic hybrid biomaterials, NIH funded National Resource for Polymeric Biomaterials (RESBIO), and the DoD-funded Center for Military Biomaterials Research (CeMBR).

Professor Kohn's research interests focus on the development of new biomaterials. He pioneered the use of combinatorial and computational methods for the optimization of biomaterials for specific medical applications. He is mostly known for his seminal work on "pseudo-poly(amino acid)s" – a new class of polymers that combine the non-toxicity of individual amino acids with the strength and process ability of high-quality engineering plastics. The most prominent member of this class of polymers is poly(DTE carbonate), a tyrosine-derived polycarbonate for which a Materials Master file has been submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in anticipation of the routine clinical use of this material in several medical implants. He has published over 200 scientific manuscripts and reviews and holds 35 patents. http://www.njbiomaterials.org/web/index.php?p=flabs