AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Biomaterial Interfaces Wednesday Sessions
       Session BI-WeM

Invited Paper BI-WeM11
The Clinical Performance of Biomimetic Interfaces: the Long and Winding Road

Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 11:20 am, Room 2014

Session: Bio-interfacial Modification and Bio-Immobilization I (Honoring Marcus Textor, ETH-Zürich for Substantial Contributions to the Field)
Presenter: K.E. Healy, University of California at Berkeley
Correspondent: Click to Email
For nearly two decades, biomimetic or bio-inspired interfaces have been designed to control both the adsorption of macromolecules and cell fate in the peri-implant region. Although successful performance of biomimetic interfaces has been frequent in the biotechnology and biosensor arena, translation of in vitro efforts into the clinical domain have largely failed. Lack of success can be attributed to complex in vivo microenvironments in the peri-implant region that encompass hypoxia, degradative molecules, and fibrin clot formation that can mask biomimetic surface engineering strategies. These microenvironments are not recapitulated using in vitro models, which leads to the poor efficiency of translational research. This lecture will emphasize the universal nature of biomimetic modification strategies and characterization modalities in the context of surface-mediated photoinitiated polymerization to create nanoscale polymer coatings that control the presentation of ligands for cell adhesion and subsequently cell fate determination. The limitations of this biointerface design approach for in vivo applications and current strategies for clinical success will be addressed.