Due to their strength, flexibility, biocompatibility, and degradation properties, organic polymers are promising materials for the replacement of permanent bone grafts. Previous work has revealed the dendritic polylysine-polycaprolactone star polymer is flexible, strong and biocompatible, but not degradable. The hyper-branched polymer was proposed to facilitate the synthesis as well as the degradation rate by leaving free ?-amines. The one-pot slow addition to core hyper-branching synthesis was optimized by varying: the degree of branching in the core molecule, the concentration of core versus monomer, and the reaction time. The largest hyper-branching sample was found using GPC, NMR, and MALDI data, which was then partially capped with glycolic acid to initialize the ring opening polymerization of polycaprolactone. The star polymers were synthesized on both the capped and uncapped hyper-branched polymer. The sample showing the largest PCL chains was made into films and proteolytic enzyme degradation studies were conducted to examine degradation rates.

Synthesis and viability of hyper-branching lysine polycaprolactone star polymers as organic bone scaffolds

245th National Meeting (2013)

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