Functional aliphatic polyesters for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications

Functional aliphatic polyesters are biodegradable polymers with many possibilities to tune physico-chemical characteristics such as hydrophilicity and degradation rate as compared to traditional polyesters (e.g. PLLA, PLGA and PCL), making the materials suitable for drug delivery or as scaffolds for tissue engineering. Lately, a large number of polyesters have been synthesized by homopolymerization of functionalized monomers or copolymerization with other monomers mainly via ring-opening polymerization (ROP) of cyclic esters. This review presents the recent trends in the synthesis of these materials and their application for protein delivery and tissue engineering. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.