Tailoring the (bio)activity of polymeric and metal oxide nano- and microparticles in biotic and abiotic environments

Polymeric and metal oxide micro- and nanoparticles are being increasingly introduced into biomedical applications such as tissue engineering as well as in consumer products, which has boosted extensive research towards developing predictive paradigms of their (bio-)activity. The core hypotheses which are tested in the four interrelated studies of this work is that the (bio-)activity of the particles is defined not only by their intrinsic properties such as the composition/structure, functional groups, surface charge, and size/morphology, but also on the concentration of particles which in turn is determined by specific applications. In addition, the (bio)activity of the particles can be controlled by the application-specific biomolecules or surfactants. These hypotheses are tested on polymeric and metal oxide particles from the perspective of their application in tissue engineering of articular cartilage and consumer products (antioxidant additives and dyes), respectively. The modeling of the transport properties of biomaterials, as well as of the adsorption properties of metal oxide nanoparticles can help to determine or interpret the observed relationships.