AAWSAP DIRD, Biomaterials, January 2010

This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 7 January 2010, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office. It is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. The report reviews biomaterials used in medicine, including silicones, Teflon, biodegradable polymers, hydrogels, titanium, ceramics and tissue constructs, and applications such as stents, joints, contact lenses, drug delivery and dialysis. It concludes that most innovation lies in new ways to apply existing materials.

From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 1/7/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD is a broad survey of biomaterials, including metals, polymers, ceramics, glasses, and composites designed to interact with living tissue, and argues that their value depends mainly on biocompatibility, reliability, and careful matching of material properties to specific medical uses. The report reviews major application areas including biosensors, implants, cardiovascular devices, contact lenses, drug delivery systems, tissue constructs, titanium devices, and dialysis membranes, emphasizing that no single biomaterial works best in every setting. Its overall conclusion is that biomaterials are already foundational to a large medical-device industry and save or improve millions of lives, but that progress tends to be slow because safety testing is stringent; as a result, most advances come from improved ways of applying established materials such as silicone, Teflon, biodegradable polymers, ceramics, and titanium in new devices and clinical settings rather than from radically new substances.

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medical therapeutics and differs from standard drug therapy or permanent implants in
that the culture becomes integrated within the patient, affording a potentially
permanent and specific cure of the disease state.
There are many approaches to tissue engineering, but all involve one or more of the
following key ingredients: harvested cells, introduction of specialized signa ling
molecules, and three-dimensional matrices.
The approach involves seed ing highly porous biodegradable matrices (or scaffolds) in
the shape of the desired bone or tissue, with cells and signaling molecules (for
example, protein growth factors), then culturing and implanting the scaffolds into the
defect to induce and direct the growth of new bone or tissue. The goal is for the cells to
attach to the scaffold, multiply, differentiate (that is, transform from a nonspecific or
prim itive state into cells exh ibit ing the specific fu nctions), and organize into normal,
healthy tissue as the scaffold degrades. The signaling molecules can be adhered to the
scaffold or incorporated directly into the scaffold material. Figure 19 illustrates the
sequence of steps in this process.
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30 matrix Cutture Implant Healty
bone
Figure 19. Scaffold-Guided Tissue Regeneration
Perhaps the biggest challenge for t issue engineering is how to ensure ang iogenesis in a
timely fashion within the scaffold construct; wit hout a blood supply, cells wi ll die, and
mass infection will occur.
In biology, "autologous" refers to cells, tissues, or even proteins that are reimplanted
into the same individual they were taken from. Bone marrow, skin biopsy, cartilage,
and bone can be used as autografts. In contrast, cells or tissues transplanted from a
different individual are referred t o as all ogeneic, homologous, or an allograft.
TISSUE SCAFFOLD BIOMATERIALS
An intriguing idea in tissue engineering is the use of biodegradable polymers as a
scaffold for growing tissues of a certain defined shape- for example, the cartilage of an
ear pinna lost in an accident.
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