Not Any New Functional Polymer Can Be for Medicine: What About Artificial Biopolymers?

Man‐made artificial organic polymers are among the more recent sources of materials used by humans. In medicine, they contribute to applications in surgery, dentistry and pharmacology. Nowadays, innovations in the field of therapeutic polymers rely on novel polymers for specific applications such as guided tissue regeneration, tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, gene transfection, etc. Introducing reactive chemical functions within or along polymer backbones is an attractive route to generate functional polymers for medicine. However, any candidate to effective application must fulfil a number of requirements, grouped under the terms biocompatibility and biofunctionality, to be of real interest and have a future for effective application. Whenever the application requires a therapeutic aid for a limited period of time to help natural healing, bioresorbability is to be taken into account on top of biocompatibility and biofunctionality. This contribution presents the case of “artificial biopolymers” and discusses the potential of some members of the family with respect to temporary therapeutic applications that require functional polymers. From a recall of the criteria that have to be fulfilled when bringing a polymeric therapeutic system up to clinical and commercial levels of development, this article discusses the case of functional polymers tailor‐made according to a strategy based on using metabolites as monomers or building blocks that can be eliminated from the body after in situ degradation: the so‐called artificial biopolymers.