MOTIVATION FOR OUR RESEARCH

Bio-Medical textiles are the ‘high-tech’ products that have very specific end-use requirements. There are numerous materials and technologies that can be creatively combined to create bio-compatible, implantable and/or resorbable textile products with specific end-uses.  Many of such technologies are young and are therefore uncharted, requiring a truly multidisciplinary research. Some of the areas that require attention and motivate our research are listed below.

  • Understanding the biocompatibility, biostability and tissue in-growth characteristics of fibrous tissue engineering scaffolds
  • Implantable devices that are engineered to release antibiotics, medications or growth promoting factors at the implant site so as to improve the rate and extent of healing
  • Development of environmentally sustainable polymers and fibrous structures that have the potential to degrade after use; the role of enzyme treated cellulosic fibers
  • Institutional supplies, where the materials are required to possess bacterial and viral barrier properties to help reduce post-operative infections
  • Application of novel cleaning technologies such as super critical liquid carbon dioxide to medical textile and healthcare devices
  • Development of appropriate microbiological test methods and risk assessment strategies for assessing alternative antimicrobial technologies required to meet the desired level of bactericidal or aseptic performance
  • Development of standard accelerated mechanical fatigue tests for predicting life expectancy of biotextile implants
  • Modeling of textile / composite fabric behavior under mechanical loading and fluid flow through fibrous structures using finite element analysis
  • Studies on the effect of alternate sterilization technologies on the chemical, mechanical and biological properties of polymers and medical textiles when presented as films, macrofibers, microfibers and nanofibers
  • Developing an accelerated test method to predict the resorption rate and biostability of polymers spun into novel bi-component fibers and structures
  • Evaluation of effective models for predicting risk assessment of the medical product development process
  • Define future trends in North American, European and Asian markets for medical textiles and healthcare products