Broken bones and torn ligaments often require surgery. The fracture must be aligned and stabilized, and the ligament reattached; this needs screws, pins, or plates made of metal or, increasingly more often, plastic. Evonik is one of the leading producers of biodegradable polymers from which such implants can be fabricated. Their advantage is that they are completely degraded to carbon dioxide and water by the body; no further surgery is required to remove them.  

RESOMER® and RESOMER® Select, the two Evonik product families of biodegradable polylactic acids, offer enormous potential for applications in medical devices, as well as pharmaceutical products. How would you like to participate in this development and contribute toward further improving treatment options—as a scientist in research, or in technical service, production, or sales and marketing?

We are already working on materials for medical devices of the next and future generation, such as customized implants, produced by 3D printing, that are gradually replaced by bone tissue in the body. These would be a godsend for many patients.  

Pharmaceutical products that gradually release their active ingredients over days, weeks, or months also offer enormous benefits, particularly if they otherwise would have to be injected multiple times. RESOMER® makes it possible, for example, for cancer patients to receive an injection just once in six months instead of every day.  And even that would far from exhaust the application possibilities for biodegradable polymers in medicine. 

Where will this take us in the future? Along with about 50 colleagues from our global RESOMER® team, you too could be searching for answers to these questions.