Development of mcl-PHA as a bioactive scaffold for tissue engineering

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Plastics that degrade into harmless products in the human body are finding increasing applications in biomedical engineering. These applications include tissue replacement or repair, drug delivery and surgical sutures. Tissue engineering involves the construction of polymer scaffolds. These are essentially sponges that can be seeded throughout with cells of the desired tissue and implanted in the human body to replace damaged tissue. Ideally the plastic should be biocompatible (i.e. does not generate inflammation), have similar mechanical properties to the tissue that it is replacing, allow the tissue cells to proliferate rapidly, and degrade at a rate that allows the cells room to grow. It is believed that certain medium-chain-length poly-3-hydroxyalkanoates (mcl-PHAs) can be chemically modified to fulfill all of these demanding requirements. These elastomeric plastics are produced in large qualities inside certain bacteria if the growth conditions are properly controlled. In addition they may be able to satisfy another requirement of tissue scaffolds that is not currently being addressed. Implantation of foreign objects into the human body may trigger clotting or lead to microbial infection. These problems can be  alleviated if the plastic can slowly release anti-clotting factors and antibiotics. This project proposes to develop a methodology for the efficient production of suitable mcl-PHA in a bioreactor. It will be processed to render it degradable (at a controlled rate) in the human body and able to accept the attachment of antibiotics and anti-clotting factors, as well as materials that allow the more rapid colonization of the scaffold by tissue cells.