Synthesis and characterization of citric acid based biodegradable polymers

Biodegredable polymers have an important place in many areas of biomedical engineering including drug delivery and tissue engineering. Especially the treatments performed by changing diseased or damaged tissues with cell cultivated scaffolds become widespread. Ideally, a scaffold used in tissue engineering applications should resemble the physical properties of the native tissue, provide structural stability to developing tissue, must be non-toxic, strong enough to withstand the mechanical impacts and once implanted inside a body be able to transfer all the materials that newly developing tissue needs. Small amounts of polymers allowed to be used in the body, by health organizations around the world such as polylactones, polylactic acids, polyglycolic acids and their co-polymer. These polymers are not soft enough for soft tissue applications. Biodegradable elastomers can sustain and recover from multiple deformations without causing irritation to the surrounding tissue in a mechanically demanding environment. It is known that, by gradually transferring stress from the degrading synthetic matrix to the newly forming tissue, scaffolds with applied cyclic mechanical strains increase collagen and elastin production in vascular smooth muscle cells. Numerous biodegradable elastomers have been developed for tissue engineering, and used as blood vessels, heart valves, nerves, cartilage and skin. When the synthesis of such elastomers investigated, one can see that the most common used monomer is citric acid which is a non-toxic metabolic product of the Krebs cycle and has been approved by the Food and Drug Administrations. Recent developments concentrate on citric acid based polymers with enhanced mechanical properties, different cross-linking methods applicable, nanoporous and have photoluminescent properties. In this study, synthesis and characterization of citric acid based biodegradable elastomers for tissue engineering applications will be realized. The obtained material will be non-toxic, have enhanced mechanical properties, biodegradable, easily processed, compatible with cells and economic.