The urgent need to replace fossil resource-based products is considerably increasing in the past few years, resulting in the search for more sustainable materials, with the aim of reducing the wastes from polymer pollution, solving economic and environmental issues. This is even more relevant in industrial fields, where toxic compounds are the basis of their polymeric formulations. Herein is reported the most relevant advances of epoxy resins (ERs) in the past decade, with great emphasis on the replacement of bisphenol A (BPA), leading to the production of renewable-based ERs with good properties. The synthesis of ERs based on renewable sources, such as vegetable oils, phenolic compounds, sugars and the outcome in the material's structure is explored within this review. Emphasis is also given to the use of new biobased curing agents and biofillers to enhance the biocharacter of the ERs.
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The study and development of new biocompatible materials to be applied as UV-curable adhesives is extremely important to grant the preparation of matrices with suitable mechanical, biological and thermal properties with a fast curing rate. Herein, photocrosslinkable biodegradable copolymers composed of unsaturated polyesters (UP) and lactic acid oligomers functionalized with 2-isocyanatoethyl methacrylate (IEMA) were produced. Henceforth, three different stoichiometric proportions were tested, which, after the addition of a biocompatible photoinitiator (Irgacure® 2959), resulted in flexible, resistant and uniform matrices after 2 minutes and 30 seconds of crosslinking.The synthesized materials were then further characterized in terms of chemical composition and thermal/mechanical behaviour. The gel content, dynamic contact angles, water sorption capacity and hydrolytic degradation were also assessed. The biocompatibility and antibacterial activity of the produced materials was also evaluated.Taking into account all the data obtained, it may be concluded that the new synthesized biodegradable bioadhesives present promising properties to be used as surgical adhesives.
Polycaprolactone (PCL) and PCL-based materials are widely applied in the biomedical field, however, their slow biodegradation profile makes them more suitable to be used in hard tissues, where healing requires longer periods of time. In order to adjust their properties to suit for soft tissues applications, PCL can be blended with other biodegradable materials in order to tune its degradation rate. Herein, polymeric blends of PCL and castor oil (CO) were prepared after their chemical modification with 2-isocyanatoethylmethacrylate (IEMA) in order to be applied as photocrosslinkable tissue adhesives. These functionalized macromers were chemically characterized and used to prepare polymeric blends (PCL-IEMA/CO-IEMA) with variable mass proportions. A biocompatible photoinitiator (Irgacure 2959) was added to these macromers blends which were then irradiated under UV light. The feasibility of the prepared materials as tissue adhesives was evaluated by assessment of their chemical/physical properties as well as their interaction with blood. Moreover, their cytotoxic profile was also evaluated through in vitro studies using human dermal fibroblasts as model cells.
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