{"id":16943,"date":"2012-09-05T16:33:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-05T19:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=16943"},"modified":"2016-05-24T13:41:58","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T16:41:58","slug":"assai-plastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/assai-plastic\/","title":{"rendered":"Assai plastic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fabio Colombini<\/span>Seeds of the assai fruit treeFabio Colombini<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Assai, the fruit of the Euterpe oleracea<\/em> palm tree, is used to make juice, smoothies and ice cream. Now, recent studies have shown that it can be used to produce natural, renewable plastic to make bone prostheses, especially for the skull. Only the seeds are used for this purpose. This novelty was announced by a team of researchers headed by chemical engineer Rubens Maciel Filho, a professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). The assai is native to the North of Brazil. The assai plastic was shown to have the same characteristics as those of petroleum-based polyurethane. In vitro tests have shown that the material is biocompatible and contains excellent mechanical and biological properties.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to recent research, the assai fruit has anti-oxidizing, anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties, among other features of interest in bioapplications,\u201d Maciel explains. He is the coordinator of the Biomanufacturing Institute (Biofabris), one of the National Science and Technology Institutes (INCT), based in the school of Chemical Engineering (FEQ) at Unicamp. The research studies began in 2009 and the new polymer, which gave rise to a patent request, is the result of the master\u2019s degree and doctoral studies of researcher La\u00eds Gabriel, both of which were conducted under Maciel\u2019s guidance.<\/p>\n

Mechanical engineer Andr\u00e9 Jardini, a researcher at Biofabris, says that polyurethane is extensively used to manufacture orthopedic prostheses because it is compatible with live tissues. \u201cIn addition, it doesn\u2019t release toxic substances when it is implanted,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is another advantage of plant-originated polyurethane, which is the low cost of the raw material. This material is comparable to a bioceramic cranium prosthesis, which costs, on average, R$ 120 thousand. We believe that producing a similar prosthesis from assai will cost about five times less.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first step of the new material\u2019s production process is to extract the fruit pulp with a special machine. Consumption of assai in the city of Belem generates 350 tons a day of pulped material (seeds and bagasse). \u201cA humid mass and seeds covered in fibers and non-soluble particles are the left-overs,\u201d explains professor Carmen Gilda Tavares Dias, from the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory of the Federal University of Par\u00e1 (UFPA), who provided the pulped samples used by the researchers from Biofabris. \u201cThis biomass is put in a dryer to remove the dry seeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Eduardo Cesar<\/span>Latticed prosthesisEduardo Cesar<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The production of polyurethane comes after this step. Assai polyurethane is made from a substance called polyol, which is extracted from the seed. A chemical compound comprised of isocyanate (a viscous liquid) and hydrogen are added and placed inside a reactor. The next step is to add nanoparticles of hydroxyapatite, a substance comprised mostly of calcium phosphate, the main compound of bones, is absorbed by the body. Assai polymer is the final product; it is a porous, rigid foam that facilitates bone growth. According to the researchers, this material is more suitable for implants and prosthesis in parts of the body that do not require major mechanical effort, such as the skull and the face. \u201cIn the case of a prosthesis for a femur head, for example, it is better to use tougher materials, such as titanium,\u201d says Jardini.<\/p>\n

If approved in the clinical tests, the biopolyurethane developed at Biofabris with funding from FAPESP and from the National Council of Scientific and Technical Development (CNPq) could become a quick and specific alternative for creating prostheses or bone implants. Treatment can be customized, according to the needs of each patient. Based on a CAT scan of the injured area, processed by the InVesalius software (see Pesquisa FAPESP <\/em>issue 148), developed by the Renato Archer Information Technology Center (CTI), in Campinas, it will be possible to manufacture a customized prosthesis. Jardini explains that the first step of this customization is to do the segmentation, by separating the soft tissue (skin, muscles, arteries) from the hard tissue (bone). \u201cThe next step is to produce a three-dimensional image of the hard tissue to show the missing part. Then, through mirroring, we \u2018draw\u2019 the prosthesis. The last step is to send this information to rapid prototyping equipment; this equipment will produce the identical anatomical prosthesis, layer by layer, of the missing bone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The area of biomaterials and biomanufacturing is a field of research that has been growing worldwide. \u201cThe field of biopolymers or polymeric biomaterials is quite extensive, due to the wide variety of plastics, such as acrylic, polyethylene, polypropylene, and PVC,\u201d says Lu\u00eds Alberto dos Santos, a professor at the Biomaterials Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). \u201cResearch studies have focused on two kinds of polymers: those with high mechanical resistance, placed in widely used areas (backbone, plates, screws), and absorbable polymers, that don\u2019t have to be removed surgically and can be used to release drugs and antibiotics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Santos says that the word biopolymer has two broad meanings. \u201cIt can be a biomaterial for biomedical use or a polymer obtained from biological materials that is not necessarily used in human beings,\u201d he explains. Concerning his own studies, Santos says that he is working on the development of a plastic derived from lactic acid, found for instance in meat or in milk and used for sutures and absorbable implants. Sodium alginate, derived from seaweed, is another biopolymer that we are working on,\u201d he adds. \u201cThis material is a hydrogel that absorbs huge amounts of water; it can be used to cover the injuries of burn patients and diabetics, and in diapers and tampons. In addition, it can be used as support for cell culture.\u201d The two research projects have resulted in submitting requests for patents.<\/p>\n

The Project<\/strong>
\nBiofabris \u2013 Biomanufacturing Institute (n\u00ba 2008\/57860-3<\/a>);\u00a0Modality<\/strong> Thematic Project \u2013 INCT;\u00a0Coordinator\u00a0<\/strong>Rubens Maciel Filho \u2013 Unicamp; Investment\u00a0<\/strong>R$ 427,794.75 and US$ 766,420.83 (FAPESP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Assai seed is raw material to replace bones in the skull","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[169],"tags":[211,259,228],"coauthors":[112],"class_list":["post-16943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-biochemistry","tag-chemistry","tag-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16943"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}