Company insight
High-performance and long-lasting strength
Development of high-performance absorbable materials that maintain sufficient strength for over six months, particularly in crystalline forms, have been historically elusive due to biocompatibility issues with high-lactide containing polymers. Poly-Med has opened the door to solving these issues through its Lactoprene PLLA/TMC biomaterials that are synthesised using block copolymer technology.
bsorbable and implantable medical devices offer significant advantages compared to their permanent counterparts. This is due to their ability to degrade over time by providing support while tissue reinforcement is needed and degrading into biologically safe by-products when it is not. Certain surgical procedures warrant long-term reinforcement to allow for sufficient healing while reducing the risk of reinjury. Additionally, long-term absorbable materials have generally been limited to a few applications due to distribution in a specific product form by OEMs that also own the proprietary biomaterial formulation (e.g. P4HB in the Phasix product that is currently distributed by Becton Dickinson). Poly-Med offers a solution to these challenges by manufacturing next-generation Lactoprene PLLA/TMC absorbable block copolymers that exhibit increased toughness and biocompatibility compared with traditional linear homopolymers and random copolymers.
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oriented monofilament and multifilament fibres for textile processing, non-oriented 1.75mm filaments for fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing, or nanofibrous tissue scaffolds created through electrospinning.
Monofilament and multifilament- oriented fibres created with Lactoprene PLLA/TMC block copolymer technology can also be constructed into a variety of applications including, but not limited to, fully absorbable hernia meshes, plastic surgery meshes, long-term absorbable sutures for both general surgery and orthopaedic surgery, and tendon reinforcement meshes. Each of these devices requires high-tenacity absorbable fibres that remain biocompatible throughout the degradation process, a unique value- proposition offered by Poly-Med’s Lactoprene PLLA/TMC block copolymer technology. Additionally, each of these textiles can be custom-designed to change a device’s overall areal or linear density, pattern, porosity, strength, elongation and modulus.
“Poly-Med can iterate faster to increase an implantable medical device’s speed to market, to ultimately support product development to the benefit of patients requiring temporary but long-term tissue reinforcement.”
By controlling chemical composition and polymer structure, Poly-Med can achieve preferred mechanical and biological properties governed by a specific device application. Poly-Med’s Lactoprene PLLA/TMC biomaterials can be transformed into custom implantable medical devices. Processing modalities include utilising
More recently, Poly-Med has developed Lactoprene PLLA/TMC non-oriented 1.75mm filaments that may be used as inputs into FFF 3D printing. This 3D printing approach works by melting the polymer filament through a nozzle head to then deposit material based on a given CAD part design. Additionally, using this approach unlocks a multitude
Medical Device Developments /
www.nsmedicaldevices.com
of porous lattice designs that can facilitate tissue ingrowth that are inaccessible to more commonly used injection moulding manufacturing methods. Poly-Med offers Lactoprene 7415 as flexible lactide with a tensile modulus ~2.0 GPa and Lactoprene 8812 as a stiff lactide with a tensile modulus ~4.4 GPa.
Poly-Med also can convert its Lactoprene PLLA/TMC biomaterials into nanofibrous tissue scaffolds via electrospinning. This approach is also an additive manufacturing layer-by- layer process where an electrified stream of polymer deposits onto a grounded surface to create nanofibres. The deposited nanofibres are on the same size scale as fibres of collagen extracellular matrices and biologic- based devices, allowing for electrospun devices to be used as synthetic tissue scaffold alternatives.
Although the materials from Poly-Med offer design advantages over traditional absorbable polymers, these materials can also be more challenging to process into a desired form factor. To circumvent additional challenges with processing these next-generation absorbable polymers, Poly-Med acts as a vertically integrated partner to convert these materials into semi-finished and finished medical components, or into packaged medical devices ready for sterilisation. Poly-Med can iterate faster to increase an implantable medical device’s speed to market, to ultimately support product development to the benefit of patients requiring temporary but long-term tissue reinforcement using its Lactoprene PLLA/ TMC block copolymer technology. ●
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