Laser-Induced Cell Detachment and Patterning with Photodegradable Polymer Substrates

摘要

Degradable polymers are constantly being developed and are proposed for numerous uses in the biotechnological arena, for example, in the fields of drug delivery and tissue engineering as carriers for sustained or stimulus-mediated drug release and as scaffolds for tissue culture. Despite the many examples of materials that exhibit degradation upon exposure to (bio)chemical stimuli (i.e. a pH value, enzymes, etc.), photodegradable polymers that are addressable in the biomedical context remain limited, mainly because of their very slow degradation rates and the high energy required for complete photodegradation. So far, research toward photosensitive polymers has been focused on shape-changing polymer actuators, polymers with pendant photolabile segments, and photodegradable polymer networks. Surprisingly, the number of studies on polymers that exhibit fast and complete photodegradation in a backbone-breakdown manner at low irradiation energies is extremely limited.