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OUR VISION
POLINA’s new key enabling technology will give Europe`s important medical industries an edge to deliver safer, biocompatible, multifunctional implantable devices and R&D tools
POLINA’S KEY TO DELIVER BIOCOMPATIBLE DEVICES:
POLINA will shift the current paradigm by adapting high-resolution photolithography for the structuring of functional, biocompatible materials with high geometrical precision directly from natural amino acids. It will overcome limitations of the current gold standard extrusion processing of biocompatible polymers, which cannot realise enough structural precision to move the technology into this new era.
LONG-TERM VISION:
> Develop a key enabling technology that will underpin the set-up of a biolithographic industry, like the current semiconductor industry, for medical devices based on natural amino acid feedstocks.
> Encourage a change in the existing semiconductor and electronics industry towards the use of greener lithographic feedstock materials (amino acids) and an overall more sustainable workflow.
OBJECTIVES
To combine a novel, light-sensitive amino acid materials platform with industrially established and emerging photolithographic techniques. It constitutes a high-risk approach on all levels (materials, processing and their implementation), which is necessary to deliver a high-gain revolutionary technology for next-generation micro-structured materials that can transform the medical device and electronics sectors. POLINA aims to develop and demonstrate this ground-breaking technology for fabricating macro and micro-structured precision manufacturing, ready for validation and upscaling in laboratory, industry and clinical settings.
WORKPLAN
WP1
is devoted to the development and optimisation of a photopolymerisation process suitable for the ring-opening polymerisation of amino acid NCAs. This will mainly apply expertise of organic and polymer synthesis combined with material science.
WP2
will apply the protocols developed in WP1 and demonstrate their suitability photolithographic patterning and scaffold printing.
WP3
will focus on the proof-of-concept integration of PAA structures into medical devices and tools and their performance evaluation.
WP4
will ensure efficient external communication and dissemination to different stakeholder groups and pave the way for future exploitation of research results.
WP5
will set up and maintain an efficient governance and management structure for effective project management and facilitate efficient internal and external communication.
