Mathematical modeling of polymer biodegradation and erosion

Yuhang Chen, Qing Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

The biodegradable polymers are widely used in therapeutic surgery and pharmaceutics, in which the degradation process has drawn significant attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to predict the polymer degradation in tissue engineering applications. A stochastic model is introduced to characterize the hydrolysis reaction in an elemental basis and the mass transport is also performed to investigate the diffusive transport of polymer erosion. Two representative polymeric films in different configurations are studied. It is found that for biodegradable systems, mass transport plays an important role in controlling the erosion pathway, in which the matrix configuration could be one of the key factors that determine the characteristics of erosion and drug release rates. The proposed model makes a useful benefit to the design optimization of the matrix architectures for biodegradable devices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2071-2074
Number of pages4
JournalAdvanced Materials Research
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2010
Event7th Pacific Rim International Conference on Advanced Materials and Processing - Cairns
Duration: 2 Aug 20106 Aug 2010

Keywords

  • Biodegradation
  • biodegradable polymers
  • mathematical modeling
  • tissue engineering
  • DEGRADATION
  • POLY(LACTIDE-CO-GLYCOLIDE)
  • MICROSPHERES
  • DEVICES

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