Toray touts polymer for regenerative medicine

Toray Industries (Tokyo) recently announced that it has created a novel bioabsorbable polymer with skin-like flexibility.

Proprietary functional polymer design technology allows the polymer to recover its original shape even after being stretched 10 times the original length, the company explained in a March 14 announcement. Toray also has identified a way to improve the polymer’s degradation speed by 10 times through hydrolysis.

Here’s how Toray officials describe the substance:

“Originally, polylactic acid and polyglycolic acid, which are bio-absorbable polymers, tended to form crystals (crystallinity) and become hard, which made it difficult to provide both flexibility and rupture resistance properties. Toray developed a special copolymerization method using lactide, dimers of lactic acid, and caprolactone, and realized both flexibility and rupture resistance enabling recovery without rupture even after being stretched 10 times the original length. Further, by highly controlling the hydrolysis of this polymer, it created a bioabsorbable polymer with the decomposition speed improved 10 times.”

Toray officials expect to apply the new polymer materials technology to applications including tissue reconstruction treatment such as regenerative medicine — where there is a need for flexibility and rupture resistance to accommodate organ and tissue movement.

to follow the movements of organs and biological tissues are required. For example, polymer-based medical materials temporarily compensate as a scaffolding for injured flexible tissues to regenerate. The materials have advantages; there is no concern of residual and repeated surgery is also available as necessary, because the materials degrade after they complete the role. As they are considered to be highly versatile, they are expected to be applied to a wide range of fields in addition to the medical use. The key points of the technologies are described below.

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