A Matter of Fact for Medical Device Materials
February 28, 2024 | News & Insights
Poly-Med’s Chief Technology Officer, Scott Taylor, PhD, was interviewed for the MPO article ‘A Matter of Fact for Medical Device Materials.’ In this Q&A session, Dr. Taylor discusses recent trends in the use of absorbable & synthetic medical device materials. and where potential points of innovation may occur in the future to facilitate next-generation absorbable implants.
Every product that we develop involves an absorbable polymer in some way. They are generally considered novel materials even though some have been in existence since the 1960s. Their popularity has ebbed and flowed a little bit, and we are in a flow right now because there is a renewed interest to create cutting-edge new products. We’re seeing an effort to replace non-degradable plastics with transient products, and a big driver of this is tissue engineering—whether it be a product that is cell laden, works with natural biologic materials, or is a pure synthetic scaffold, the application of 3D printing and in-vivo tissue scaffolding is really driving the development of absorbable polymers. The FDA does not approve materials, it approves the medical device itself, so any new application of a material or materials will be looked at with increased scrutiny. Any medical devices transitioning to absorbable polymers will be new. Tacks, staples, and sutures are the more traditional applications, but more recently they have been looked at as novel because the traditional materials have had a limited functionality. So, to support new uses for these materials we have to create new polymers with regards to how they degrade and their biocompatibility.
