Micro-nanostructured polymeric materials with specific functionalities for advanced biomedical applications

The possibility to tune material properties up to nanoscale represents a great opportunity for the scientific community to obtain devices capable to fulfill the always new medical demands. During this Thesis project micro and nano-structured polymeric materials have been used in the field of drug delivery and tissue engineering. Three different research lines have been explored: (i) the use of polymeric fibrous systems as drug and nanoparticles carriers, (ii) design and evaluation of novel shape memory polymers to produce shape memory scaffolds and (iii) development of smart affinity membranes. Electrospinning were exploited to obtain polymeric fibrous carriers made of different biodegradable and bioresorbable polymers, such us Poly(lactic-acid) and Poly(lactic-co-glycolic). The obtained biodegradable carriers have been exploited to achieve controllable particles release as well as, to obtain composites capable to deliver two drugs simultaneously with controllable and predictable kinetics. The possibility to obtain electrospun scaffolds capable of interconverting between a temporary and a permanent shape with the application of a thermal stimulus was explored. In this context, two polymers have been designed to behave as shape memory materials in the range of human body temperature. Finally smart affinity membranes have been studied. This kind of materials are capable to detect specific molecules or biomacromolecules from complex mixtures, finding useful applications in the biomedical field as diagnostic and therapeutic devices. Smart affinity membranes might be used for example to detect specific kind of cells by exploiting the binding interaction between an antibody and cell receptors. During this thesis project poly(L-lactic acid) electrospun scaffolds conjugated with antibodies have been produced and the efficacy of different functionalization methods to generate the –COOH group necessary to perform the antibodies conjugation was investigated.