(333a) Improved Biocompatiblity with Novel Biomaterials

Synthetic or natural materials have been commonly used in many biomedical applications, while their biocompatibility with cells or human body is a central concern. Recently, the development of novel polymeric biomaterials with new chemistry and/or structures has significantly improved the biocompatibility in several major biomedical applications. One important advance are zwitterionic polymers, which contain balanced-charged biomimetic moieties similar to the hydrophilic moieties in the cell membranes. Zwitterionic polymers are superhydrophilic, they can strongly bind water molecules, and therefore they are highly resistant to nonspecific protein adsorption. This important property renders their ignorable nonspecific interaction with living cells and thus no negative interaction with the living cell or tissue functions. In this talk, we will present several most recent examples of novel biocompatible materials and their excellent performance in applications such as tissue engineering.