PHA applications: Addressing the price performance issue I. Tissue engineering

This paper describes the development of medical applications for polyhydrox yalkanoates (PHAs), a class of natural polymers with a wide range of thermo plastic properties. Methods are described for preparing PHAs with high puri ty, modifying these materials to change their surface and degradation prope rties, and methods for fabricating them into different forms, including tis sue engineering scaffolds. Preliminary reports characterizing their in vivo behavior are given, as well as methods for using the natural polymers in t issue engineering applications. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights r eserved.