élaboration of new functionalized bacterial biopolyesters for biomedical applications
Poly(3-hydroxyalkanoate)s, or PHAs, are linear biodegradable and biocompatible biopolyesters synthesized by bacterial microorganisms as energy and carbon supply. They are synthesized by bacteria from renewable resources and the diversity of the achievable structures leads to a large range of mechanical properties. First, we studied the PHAs production ability of several new marine bacteria strains, isolated from microbial mats from French Polynesia, using, among others, natural substrates such as coprah oil, glucose and oleic acid. We showed particularly that the strain Pseudomonas guezennei was able to produce PHAs with controlled amounts of insaturations and high molar masses. Then, we prepared functionalized PHAs oligomers with controlled structure and bearing a terminal alkyne or alkene function. Following that, these oligomers were used to elaborate amphiphilic by click chemistry graft copolymers EPS-g-PHA with bacterial exopolysaccharide (EPS). Finally, the last part of this work was the making of a scaffold for stem cell culture for tissue engineering which combined the mechanical properties of PHAs and the hydrophilicity and bioactive properties of EPS