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Biomaterials: Don't stress over it

Nature Reviews Materials volume 2, Article number: 17067 (2017) Cite this article

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Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the complex mechanical behaviour of biological tissues is a key challenge in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Sergei Sheiko and colleagues now report in Nature a rational design platform that enables the fine-tuning of tissue-like mechanical properties using synthetic elastomers.

One of the key issues is that for linear polymers, a larger value of the elastic modulus leads to a lower value of extensibility, which hinders the synthesis of a hard but flexible material. Current tissue-mimetic technologies are mainly based on hydrogels — mixtures of assorted polymers and water — that have the limitation of usually being synthesized by trial and error rather than through exact and accurate design.

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References

  1. Vatankhah-Varnosfaderani, M. et al. Mimicking biological stress–strain behaviour with synthetic elastomers. Naturehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature23673 (2017)

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Authors
  1. Christine-Maria Horejs
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Horejs, CM. Biomaterials: Don't stress over it. Nat Rev Mater 2, 17067 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2017.67

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2017.67

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