An Investigation of Nano-structured Polymers for Use as Bladder Tissue Replacement Constructs

Abstract

Conventionally, studies investigating the design of synthetic bladder wall substitutes have involved polymers with micro-dimensional structures. Since the body is made up of nano-structured components (e.g., extracellular matrix proteins), our focus has been in the use of nano-structured polymers in order to design a three-dimensional synthetic bladder construct that mimics bladder tissuein vivo. In order to complete this task, we fabricated novel, nano-structured, biodegradable materials to serve as substrates for bladder tissue constructs and tested the cytocompatibility properties of these biomaterialsin vitro. The results from ourin vitro work to date have provided the first evidence that cellular responses (such as adhesion and proliferation) of bladder smooth muscle cells are enhanced as poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) surface feature dimensions are reduced into the nanometer range.