Biocompatible, hyaluronic acid modified silicone elastomers

Although silicones possess many useful properties as biomaterials, their hydrophobicity can be problematic. To a degree, this issue can be addressed by surface modification with hydrophilic polymers such as poly(ethylene glycol), but the resulting structures are usually not conducive to cell growth. In the present work, we describe the synthesis and characterization of covalently linked hyaluronic acid (HA) (35 kDa) to poly(dimethylsiloxane) …