Project 2
Biomaterials play an integral role in medicine today—restoring function and facilitating healing for people after injury or disease. Biomaterials may be natural or synthetic and are used in medical applications to support, enhance, or replace damaged tissue or a biological function. The first historical use of biomaterials dates to antiquity, when ancient Egyptians used sutures made from animal sinew. The modern field of biomaterials combines medicine, biology, physics, and chemistry, and more recent influences from tissue engineering and materials science. The field has grown significantly in the past decade due to discoveries in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and more.
Metals, ceramics, plastic, glass, and even living cells and tissue all can be used in creating a biomaterial. They can be reengineered into molded or machined parts, coatings, fibers, films, foams, and fabrics for use in biomedical products and devices. These may include heart valves, hip joint replacements, dental implants, or contact lenses. They often are biodegradable, and some are bio-absorbable, meaning they are eliminated gradually from the body after fulfilling a function.
Before an experimental drug is studied in vivo, it is important for its mechanism of action and complexity to be thoroughly evaluated by means of in vitro models. In vitro models provide a starting point for researchers to gather insights into how a cell responds to a new drug in a controlled, isolated environment.
For example, in vitro tumor models provide low-cost platforms for a pharmaceutical company to study the biological effects of experimental drug candidates against cancer cell lines. Results from these studies can inform researchers about the molecular mechanisms of each drug candidate and how these mechanisms may influence cancerous cells under defined conditions. However, these results are extremely difficult to extrapolate a clinical effect from as they studies were not performed in an intact, living organism, where far more biological variables are in play.
Once a drug candidate demonstrates effectiveness through a series of in vitro experiments, in vivo models can be employed to advance drug development studies. These preclinical studies typically involve the use of animals to further evaluate the safety, efficacy and delivery of a drug candidate. For example, rodent models inoculated with tumor cells are commonly used to screen anti-tumor drug candidates that exhibited promising results throughout previously performed in vitro studies.