Abstract
Biomaterials have played an enormous role in the success of medical devices and drug delivery systems. We discuss here new challenges and directions in biomaterials research. These include synthetic replacements for biological tissues, designing materials for specific medical applications, and materials for new applications such as diagnostics and array technologies.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Peppas, N. A. & Langer, R. New challenges in biomaterials. Science 263, 1715–1720 (1994)
Ratner, B. D., Hoffman, A. S., Schoen, J. F. & Lemons, J. E. Biomaterials Science, an Introduction to Materials in Medicine 1–8 (Academic, San Diego, 1996)
Bell, E., Ivarsson, B. & Merrill, C. Production of a tissue-like structure by contraction of collagen lattices by human fibroblasts of different proliferative potential in vitro. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 76, 1274–1278 (1979)
Langer, R. Drug delivery and targeting. Nature 392(Suppl.), 5–10 (1998)
Langer, R. Where a pill won't reach. Sci. Am. 288, 50–57 (2003)
Morice, M. et al. A randomized comparison of a sirolimus-eluting stent with a standard stent for coronary revascularization. N. Engl. J. Med. 346, 1773–1780 (2002)
Langer, R. Perspectives: Drug delivery—Drugs on target. Science 293, 58–59 (2001)
Vacanti, J. P. & Langer, R. Tissue engineering: the design and fabrication of living replacement devices for surgical reconstruction and transplantation. Lancet 354, 32–34 (1999)
Yurchenco, P. D., Birk, D. E. & Mecham, R. P. (eds) Extracellular Matrix Assembly and Structure (Academic, San Diego, 1994)
van Hest, J. C. M. & Tirrell, D. A. Protein-based materials: Toward a new level of structural control. Chem. Commun. 19, 1897–1904 (2001)
Lee, J., Macosko, C. W. & Urry, D. W. Mechanical properties of cross-linked synthetic elastomeric polypentapeptides. Macromolecules 34, 5968–5974 (2001)
Nagapudi, K. et al. Photomediated solid-state cross-linking of an elastin-mimetic recombinant protein polymer. Macromolecules 35, 1730–1737 (2002)
McMillan, R. A. & Conticello, V. P. Synthesis and characterization of elastin-mimetic protein gels derived from a well-defined polypeptide precursor. Macromolecules 33, 4809–4821 (2000)
Huang, L. et al. Generation of synthetic elastin-mimetic small diameter fibers and fiber networks. Macromolecules 33, 2989–2997 (2000)
Heilshorn, S. C., DiZio, K. A., Welsh, E. R. & Tirrell, D. A. Endothelial cell adhesion to the fibronectin CS5 domain in artificial extracellular matrix proteins. Biomaterials 24, 4245–4252 (2003)
Urry, D. W., Parker, T. M., Reid, M. C. & Gowda, D. C. Biocompatibility of the bioeleastic material poly(GVGVP) and its γ-irradiation crosslinked matrix. J. Bioact. Compat. Polym. 3, 263–282 (1991)
Kwon, I., Kirshenbaum, K. & Tirrell, D. A. Breaking the degeneracy of the genetic code. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 7512–7513 (2003)
Alsberg, E., Anderson, K. W., Albeiruti, A., Rowley, J. A. & Mooney, D. J. Engineering growing tissues. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 12025–12030 (2002)
Zhang, S. Emerging biological materials through molecular self-assembly. Biotechnol. Adv. 20, 321–339 (2002)
Hartgerink, J. D., Beniash, E. & Stupp, S. Peptide-amphiphile nanofibers: A versatile scaffold for the preparation of self-assembling materials. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 5133–5138 (2002)
Barrera, D. A., Zylstra, E., Lansbury, P. T. & Langer, R. Synthesis and RGD peptide modification of a new biodegradable copolymer system: Poly(lactic acid-co-lysine). J. Am. Chem. Soc. 115, 11010–11011 (1993)
Cook, A. D. et al. Characterization and development of RGD-peptide-modified poly(lactic acid-co-lysine) as an interactive, resorbable biomaterial. J. Biomed. Mater. Res. 35, 513–523 (1997)
Gref, R. et al. Biodegradable long-circulating polymeric nanospheres. Science 263, 1600–1603 (1994)
Halstenberg, S., Panitch, A., Rizzi, S., Hall, H. & Hubbell, J. A. Biologically engineered protein-graft-poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogels: A cell adhesive and plasmin-degradable biosynthetic material for tissue repair. Biomacromolecules 3, 710–723 (2002)
Miyata, T., Asami, N. & Uragami, T. A reversibly antigen-responsive hydrogel. Nature 399, 766–768 (1999)
Kelch, S. & Lendlein, A. Shape memory polymers. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn Engl. 41, 2034–2057 (2002)
Lendlein, A. & Langer, R. Biodegradable, elastic shape-memory polymers for potential biomedical applications. Science 296, 1673–1676 (2002)
Pathak, C. P., Swahney, A. S. & Hubbell, J. A. Rapid photopolymerization of immunoprotective gelins in contact with cells and tissue. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 114, 8311–8312 (1992)
Anseth, K., Shastri, V. & Langer, R. Photopolymerizable degradable polyanhydrides with osteocompatibility. Nature Biotechnol. 17, 156–159 (1999)
Elisseff, J. et al. Transdermal photopolymerization for minimally invasive implantation. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 96, 3104–3107 (1999)
Peppas, N. A. Hydrogels and drug delivery. Curr. Opin. Colloid Interf. Sci. 2, 531–537 (1997)
Lahann, J. et al. A reversible switching of surfaces. Science 299, 371–374 (2003)
Brocchini, S., James, K., Tangpasuthadol, V. & Kohn, J. Structure-property correlations in a combinatorial library of degradable biomaterials. J. Biomed. Mater. Res. 42, 66–75 (1998)
Belu, A. M., Brocchini, S., Kohn, J. & Ratner, B. D. Characterization of combinatorially designed polyarylates by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry. Rapid Commun. Mass Spectrom. 14, 564–571 (2000)
Lynn, D. M., Anderson, D. G., Putnam, D. & Langer, R. Accelerated discovery of synthetic transfection vectors: Parallel synthesis and screening of degradable polymer library. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 8155–8156 (2001)
Anderson, D., Lynn, D. & Langer, R. Semi-automated synthesis and screening of a large library of degradable cationic polymers for gene delivery. Angew. Chem. 42, 3153–3158 (2003)
Luo, D. & Saltzman, W. M. Synthetic DNA delivery systems. Nature Biotechnol. 18, 33–37 (2000)
Pun, S. H. & Davis, M. E. Development of a nonviral gene delivery vehicle for systemic application. Bioconjugate Chem. 13, 630–639 (2002)
Affleck, D. G., Yu, L., Bull, D. A., Bailey, S. H. & Kim, S. W. Augmentation of myocardial transfection using TerplexDNA: a novel gene delivery system. Gene Ther. 8, 349–353 (2001)
McManus, M. T. & Sharp, P. A. Gene silencing in mammals by small interfering RNAs. Nature Rev. Genet. 3, 737–747 (2002)
Mathiowitz, E. et al. Biologically erodable microspheres as potential oral drug delivery systems. Nature 386, 410–414 (1997)
Torres-Lugo, M., Garcia, M., Record, R. & Peppas, N. A. pH-sensitive hydrogels as gastrointestinal tract absorption enhancers: Transport mechanisms of salmon calcitonin and other model molecules using the Caco-2 cell model. Biotechnol. Progr. 18, 612–616 (2002)
Santini, J. T., Cima, M. J. & Langer, R. A controlled-release microchip. Nature 397, 335–338 (1999)
Grayson, A. et al. Multi-pulse drug delivery from a resorbable polymeric microchip device. Nature Mater. 2, 767–772 (2003)
Stangel, K. et al. A programmable intraocular CMOS pressure sensor system implant. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits 36, 1094–1100 (2001)
Schwartz, M. et al. Single chip CMOS imagers and flexible microelectronic stimulators for a retina implant system. Sensors Actuators 83, 40–46 (2000)
Kaushik, S. et al. Lack of pain associated with microfabricated microneedles. Anesth. Analg. 92, 502–504 (2001)
Borenstein, J. T. et al. Microfabrication technology for vascularized tissue engineering. Biomed. Microdevices 4, 671–680 (1999)
Eisen, M. B. & Brown, P. O. DNA arrays for analysis of gene expression. Methods Enzymol. 303, 179–205 (1999)
Zhu, H. & Snyder, M. Protein chip technology. Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol. 7, 55–63 (2003)
Houseman, B. T., Huh, J. H., Kron, S. J. & Mrksich, M. Peptide chips for the quantitative evaluation of protein kinase activity. Nature Biotechnol. 20, 270–274 (2002)
Houseman, B. T. & Mrksich, M. Carbohydrate arrays for the evaluation of protein binding and enzymatic modification. Chem. Biol. 9, 443–454 (2002)
Kononen, J. et al. Tissue microarrays for high-throughput molecular profiling of tumor specimens. Nature Med. 4, 844–847 (1998)
Fodor, S. P. et al. Light-directed, spatially addressable parallel chemical synthesis. Science 251, 767–773 (1991)
McGall, G. et al. Light-directed synthesis of high-density oligonucleotide arrays using semiconductor photoresists. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 93, 13555–13560 (1996)
Schena, M., Shalon, D., Davis, R. W. & Brown, P. O. Quantitative monitoring of gene expression patterns with a complementary DNA microarray. Science 270, 467–470 (1995)
Sosnowski, R., Tu, E., Butler, W., O'Connell, J. & Heller, M. Rapid determination of single base mismatch mutations in DNA hybrids by direct electric field control. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 94, 1119–1123 (1997)
Hui Liu, R., Lenigk, R., Druyor-Sanchez, R. L., Yang, J. & Grodzinski, P. Hybridization enhancement using cavitation microstreaming. Anal. Chem. 75, 1911–1917 (2003)
Kajiyama, T. et al. Genotyping on a thermal gradient DNA chip. Genome Res. 13, 467–475 (2003)
Cheek, B. J., Steel, A. B., Torres, M. P., Yu, Y. & Yang, H. Chemiluminescence detection for hybridization assays on the flow-thru chip, a three-dimensional microchannel biochip. Anal. Chem. 73, 5777–5783 (2001)
Haab, B. B., Dunham, M. J. & Brown, P. O. Protein microarrays for highly parallel detection and quantitation of specific proteins and antibodies in complex solutions. Genome Biol. 2, 1–13 (2001)
MacBeath, G. & Schreiber, S. L. Printing proteins as microarrays for high-throughput function determination. Science 289, 1760–1763 (2000)
Arenkov, P. et al. Protein microchips: Use for immunoassay and enzymatic reactions. Anal. Biochem. 28, 123–131 (2000)
Hodneland, C. D., Lee, Y.-S., Min, D.-H. & Mrksich, M. Selective immobilization of proteins to self-assembled monolayers presenting active site-directed capture ligands. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 5048–5052 (2002)
Zhu, H. et al. Global analysis of protein activities using proteome chips. Science 293, 2101–2105 (2001)
Groves, J. T. & Boxer, S. G. Micropattern formation in supported lipid membranes. Acc. Chem. Res. 35, 149–157 (2002)
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Movie 1
A biodegradable shape memory polymer creates a self-tying knot due to a change in temperature (Courtesy of Andreas Lendlein). (MP4 1321 kb)
Supplementary Movie 2
Video displaying an idealized version of a switchable surface.(MP4 213 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Langer, R., Tirrell, D. Designing materials for biology and medicine. Nature 428, 487–492 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02388
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02388
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.