Cross-linked vegetable oil with covalently loaded dexamethasone: linear drug release for osteogenic induction of hBMSCs in vitro

Inverse design of chemoenzymatic epoxidation of soyabean oil through artificial intelligence-driven experimental approach

This paper presents an inverse design methodology that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI)-driven experiments to optimize the chemoenzymatic epoxidation of soyabean oil using hydrogen peroxide and lipase (Novozym 435). First, experiments are conducted using a systematic 3-level, 5-factor Box-Behnken design to explore the effect of input parameters on oxirane oxygen content (OOC (%)). Based on these experiments, various AI models are trained, with the support vector regression (SVR) model being found to be the most accurate. SVR is then used as a fitness function in particle swarm optimization, and the suggested optimal conditions, upon experimental validation, resulted in a maximum OOC of 7.19 % (∼98.5 % relative conversion of oil to epoxy). The results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach over existing methods. This framework offers a general intensified process optimization strategy with minimal resource utilization that can be applied to any other process.

Vegetable-oil-based polymers as future polymeric biomaterials

Vegetable oils are one of the most important classes of bio-resources for producing polymeric materials. The main components of vegetable oils are triglycerides - esters of glycerol with three fatty acids. Several highly reactive sites including double bonds, allylic positions and the ester groups are present in triglycerides from which a great variety of polymers with different structures and functionalities can be prepared. Vegetable-oil-based polyurethane, polyester, polyether and polyolefin are the four most important classes of polymers, many of which have excellent biocompatibilities and unique properties including shape memory. In view of these characteristics, vegetable-oil-based polymers play an important role in biomaterials and have attracted increasing attention from the polymer community. Here we comprehensively review recent developments in the preparation of vegetable-oil-based polyurethane, polyester, polyether and polyolefin, all of which have potential applications as biomaterials.