In recent years, significant progress has been made in the field of biomaterials, with the majority of these advancements relating to materials modified for biological uses. The overall properties of biomaterials, such as non-toxicity, corrosion resistance, controlled degradability, elastic modulus, and fatigue strength, have long been considered highly relevant to the selection of suitable biomaterials for specific biomedical applications.
The driving force behind surface modification approaches is that it is often difficult or impossible to obtain the desired overall material properties through engineered polymer synthesis. Alfa Chemistry focuses on various recent advances in surface-modified polymeric substrates for biomedical applications. Our chemical surface modification of polymeric biomaterials research and application is more wide and effective, with great outcomes. Please get in touch with us if you'd like to quickly modify the surface of your material surfaces for biomedical applications.
Anti-Fouling Surface Technology Platform
The deposition of trapped particles, colloids, salts, macromolecules, and other contaminants on membrane surfaces or within the pores of pore walls is known as fouling. Biofouling is the unwanted buildup of biological deposits on a surface, which can include bacteria and macroorganisms like microbes. Biomedical applications such as biosensors, medical implants, surgical devices, and healthcare items all rely on antifouling surfaces.
Chemical surface modification as an effective tool for studying the antifouling properties of surfaces is the focus of the Alfa Chemistry research group. Our specific research includes, but is not limited to, the following.
Biocompatible Surface Technology Platform
With the advancement of chemical surface modification technologies for materials, more research is being focused on improving biocompatibility, which is especially crucial when choosing medical implants. Polyglycolic acid (PGA), polydioxanone, and other polymeric biomaterials offer a wide range of biocompatible uses due to their outstanding processing qualities and physicochemical and mechanical properties.
Chemical surface modification as an effective tool for studying surface biocompatibility is the focus of the Alfa Chemistry research group. Our specific biocompatibility studies include but are not limited to, the following.
Germicidal Surface Technology Platform
Contamination, adhesion, and multiplication of microbes, particularly bacteria, have all been major concerns for biomaterials. When compared to single anti-biofouling features, "kill-release" shows significant advantages in maintaining long-term bactericidal efficacy, which has a promising application and market demand in the biomedical device field.
Alfa Chemistry has put forth a lot of effort to create smart interfaces that are dynamically controllable in response to specific stimuli using polyelectrolytes. Clicking kosmotropic counterions into cationic polyelectrolyte brushes to accomplish a reversible transition between killing and releasing bacteria on bactericidal surfaces is a new approach for releasing bacteria from bactericidal surfaces. As an antibacterial supramolecular platform, SI-ATRP created cationic poly (trimethylamino) ethyl methacrylate chloride) (PTMAEMA) brushes. These brushes can control the release of bacteria for active killing, and they could be used in reusable medical equipment and industrial facilities.
Fig 1. Schematic illustration of contact killing and counterion-assisted release of bacteria on PTMAEMA. (Sun W, et al. 2020)
Bioactive Surface Technology Platform
Alfa Chemistry can help you switch interactions with biological systems by using bioactive surfaces. Depending on your demands, our bioactive surface technologies can change surfaces to achieve specific activities, such as trapping specific proteins or responding to glycans, all while operating under relatively simple, moderate, and environmentally friendly chemical conditions.
Drug Delivery Surface Technology Platform
A thorough understanding of polymers and their modifications holds great potential for future drug delivery applications. Alfa Chemistry's drug delivery surface technologies can help you achieve site-specific and time-controlled drug delivery to mitigate unwanted side effects and improve the efficacy of a given treatment.
Self-assembly is one of the most frequent surface modification strategies for drug delivery. To load hydrophobic materials into polymeric nano- or particles, we use layer-by-layer (LbL) self-assembly as a direct approach to surface modification. This simple procedure can be applied to a variety of drug administration scenarios.
Reference
- Sun W, et al. (2020). "Chemical Surface Modification of Polymeric Biomaterials for Biomedical Applications." Macromol. Rapid Commun. 41: 1900430.
