MOLECULAR DESIGN OF BLOODCOMPATIBLE MATERIALS.

There are strong demands for innovative antithrombogenic materials in the field of clinical medicine, because of their necessity in fabricating implantable artificial organs and progressive surgical prosthesis. This paper reviews the present status of the development of antithrombogenic materials. Special emphasis was placed on the promising feature of microdomain structured polymers as antithrombogenic materials. A series of studies reviewed in this paper demonstrates that contact-induced activation of blood platelets, a triggering phenomenon of thrombosis, could be eliminated by designing a polymer surface to have appropriate microdomain structure. As a possible mechanism involved in this suppressive effect on activation of platelets, the authors have proposed a mechanism of 'capping control'.