Bone damage or loss has witnessed a tremendous increase in recent years. It has adversely impacted the quality of life. A variety of musculoskeletal diseases including back pain, arthritis, osteoporosis, and bodily injuries are now a common trend in the U.S. population. Regenerative engineering offers a promising transdisciplinary technique that can surmount this enormous problem. It is the integration of tissue engineering, advanced material science, stem cell science, physics, developmental biology and clinical translation. In this approach, biodegradable polymers play a vital role as supportive template for tissue development. Currently there is an increasing need for alternative biodegradable polymers with the rapid growth of musculoskeletal regeneration applications. Polymer blending is a practical strategy to design new materials that synergistically combine the beneficial features of polymers due to the ease of blend preparation and efficient control of material properties via compositional change. Polyphosphazene-polyester blends are attractive materials for bone tissue regeneration applications due to their controllable degradation pattern with non-toxic and neutral pH degradation products. In tissue regeneration, biodegradable polymers such as PLA, PGA, and their copolymers (PLAGA) are the most commonly used. However, the bulk erosion of these materials results in the accumulation of acid in the region of implants. Reports have shown that this acidic accumulation triggers off abrupt failure of the structure integrity and compromises biocompatibility both in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, inflammatory responses and foreign body reactions were reported for the patients after being treated with polyester implants. Thus, developing biomaterials with neutral degradation products and bioactivity are highly desirable for bone tissue-engineered scaffolds. Polyphosphazenes have received a great deal of attention in this regard, due to their outstanding synthetic flexibility and their ability to act as a buffer when blended with PLAGA. In vitro and in vivo studies on these polyphosphazene-based blends showed good prospects as they were able to support cell adhesion and proliferation and show elevated phenotype expression compared to polyesters. Blending polyphosphazene with polyesters has opened up huge door of opportunities for the development of many more biomaterials for regenerative engineering and as well as other biomedical applications.

Polyphosphazene-based biomaterials for regenerative engineering

254th National Meeting (2017)

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