Biological Polymers
There are advantages to using biological polymers over synthetic polymers. They are very likely to have good biocompatibility and be easily degraded, because they are already present in nature in some form. However, there are also several disadvantages. They have unwieldy mechanical properties and degradation rates that cannot be controlled over a wide range. In addition, there is always the possibility that naturally-derived materials may cause an immune response or contain microbes. In the production of naturally-derived materials there will also be batch-to-batch variation in large-scale isolation procedures that cannot be controlled. Some other problems plaguing natural polymers are their inability to support growth across long lesion gaps due to the possibility of collapse, scar formation, and early re-absorption. Despite all these disadvantages, some of which can be overcome, biological polymers still prove to be the optimal choice in many situations.
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