Metal plates and screws are today the gold standard surgical procedure for fixation of complex bone fractures. This is mainly due to the extraordinary demands on the implants that need to display high toughness and modulus during the healing process. However, several disadvantages are coupled to the insertion of metal implants including patient discomfort and non-degradable features. Consequently, the surgical community is looking for alternative material concepts and methodology that overcome the inherent drawbacks of currently used implants. The polymer networks need to fulfill a number requirement for their realization as hard tissue fixation materials: 1. Mild, chemoselective and complete polymerization of the monomers in a surgically environment 2. Mechanically robust adhesives that can withstand heavy loads typically accompanied with proper bone healing 3. Biocompatibility Adhesives are today used in dental applications and soft tissue repair. Unfortunately, for bone fracture fixation these systems do not fulfill all of the above mentioned criteria including the allergenic acrylic systems. In recent years’, materials crosslinked via the photoinitiated thiol-ene coupling (TEC) chemistry have shown great promise in biomedical applications. In particular, high E-modulus materials based on triazine trione (TT) are of high interest. Crosslinking of TT monomers using TEC results materials with E-modulus of around 1 GPa being appropriate for hard tissue repair. Here we present the design of novel TT monomers that can undergo thiol-yne coupling (TYC) reactions and their crosslinking using high energy visible light chemistry. The obtained adhesives were found to fulfill the criteria needed for hard tissue repair. More specifically, then compared to the TEC systems, the TYC systems increased the modulus and toughness by 87% and 480%, respectively. Furthermore, the TYC networks show excellent biocompatibility in in vitro studies making them to great candidates for bone fracture fixation.

Triazine trione based adhesive as potential materials for bone fracture fixation

256th National Meeting (2018)

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