The fabrication of complex structures using biodegradable polymerised high internal phase emulsion (PolyHIPE) scaffolds for targeted drug delivery

口腔医学中有多种未满足的临床需求，这些需求将受益于将治疗性分子直接递送到特定部位，包括药物诱导的颌骨骨坏死（MRONJ）。这种情况导致口腔软组织发育损伤，暴露底层骨骼，然后被一系列病原微生物感染，引起疼痛并降低生活质量。这些病变实际上是无法治疗的，临床牙科学院目前的工作是制作假体以保护该部位免受进一步伤害。该项目的目的是将这项研究从保护推进到治疗药物的递送，以消除感染和促进组织再生。主管最近开发了许多基于polyHIPEs的可生物降解多孔材料，并证明它适用于增材制造，以创建复杂/定制形状。在之前的工作中，我们生产了用于骨组织工程的polyHIPE微球，我们还将polyHIPE与静电纺丝结合在一起，生产了一种引导骨再生膜。由于使用polyHIPE方法产生高度微孔表面，这种生物材料系统提供了非常高的表面积：体积比，并且具有生物相容性，已经在医疗应用中大量使用。

There are a variety of unmet clinical needs in oral medicine that would benefit from direct delivery of therapeutic molecules to a specific site, including medication induced osteonecrosis of the jaw (MRONJ). This condition leads to the development lesions in oral soft tissues that expose the underlying bone, which is then infected by a range of pathogenic microorganisms, causing pain and reducing quality of life. These lesions are effectively untreatable, and current work in the School of Clinical Dentistry has been directed at the fabrication of prostheses to protect the site from further injury. The aim of this project is to advance this research beyond protection to delivery of therapeutic agents to eliminate the infection and promote tissue regeneration. The supervisors have recently developed a number of biodegradable porous materials based on polyHIPEs, and demonstrated that it is suitable for additive manufacturing to create complex/custom shapes. In previous work we produced polyHIPE microspheres for bone tissue engineering and we have also combined polyHIPEs with electrospinning to produce a guided bone regeneration membrane. This biomaterial system provides a very high surface area:volume ratio on account of the generation of a highly microporous surface using a polyHIPE approach, and it is biocompatible and already used in bulk in medical applications.