Design of degradable polyphosphoester networks with tailor-made stiffness and hydrophilicity as scaffolds for tissue engineering

In the recent decades, biodegradable and biocompatible polyphosphoesters (PPEs) gain wide attention in the biomedical field as relevant substitutes for conventional aliphatic polyesters. These amorphous materials of low glass transition temperature offer promise for the design of soft scaffolds for tissue engineering. Advantageously, the easy variation of the nature of the lateral pendant groups of PPEs allows the insertion of pendent unsaturations valuable for their further crosslinking. In addition, varying the length of the pendent alkyl chains allows tuning their hydrophilicity. The present work aims at synthesizing PPEs networks of well-defined hydrophilicity and mechanical properties. More precisely, we aimed at preparing degradable materials exhibiting identical hydrophilicity but different mechanical properties and vice versa. For that purpose, PPE copolymers were synthesized by ring-opening copolymerization of cyclic phosphate monomers bearing different pendent groups (e.g. methyl, butenyl and bu...