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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.
UNCLASSIFIED// FOR OFFICl"L l:191!!! 9HLY laboratory, in processing biomolecules in biotechnology, for fertility regulation implants in cattle, in diagnostic gene arrays, in the aquaculture of oysters, and for investigational cell-silicon "biochips." The common thread in these applications is the interaction between biological systems and synthetic or modified natural materials. Biomimetic materials, in contrast, are not made by living organisms but have compositions and properties similar to materials made by living organisms. For example, the calcium hydroxyapatite coating found on many artificial hips-used as metal-bone interface cement to make it easier to attach implants to bone-is similar to the coating found in mollusk shells. IMPORTANCE OF BIOCOMPATIBILITY Biocompatibility is an important issue in biomedical implants and sensors. A material-tissue interaction that results from implanting a foreign object in the body is a major obstacle to developing stable and long-term implantable devices and sensors. The processes that occur when sensors are placed in the complex living environment of the human body are sometimes known as biofouling. In biofouling, the physical or chemically sensitive portion of the sensor interface becomes coated with proteins, blood-formed elements, adherent immunological cells, and sometimes forms of scar tissue that tend to isolate the sensor from the rest of the body environment. This response of tissue is a foreign body reaction to any object introduced in tissue that does not express surface characteristics that identify it as part of the host tissues. Experiences of many investigators (more than 600 reported studies since 1996) with the biocompatibility of biomaterials related to the function of implanted biosensors have been poor such that many companies have abandoned implantable sensor devices altogether. Rather, the recent trend in medical biosensors is toward placing them outside the body. Newer sensors are often based on optical principles in an effort to obviate the biocompatibility and biomaterial issues of placing sensors inside the human body. SCIENCE OF BIOMATERIALS The study and use of biomaterials bring together researchers from diverse academic backgrounds who must communicate clearly. Professions that intersect in the development, study, and application of biomaterials include bioengineer, chemist, chemical engineer, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, materials scientist, biologist, microbiologist, physician, veterinarian, ethicist, nurse, lawyer, regulatory specialist, and venture capitalist. The number of medical devices used each year in humans is very large. Figure 2 estimates usage for common devices, all of which employ biomaterials. UNCLASSIFIED/ /FOlil OFFICiI>~ U&ili Qt11 X vii
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 32 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.