ABSTRACT
Conducting polymers (CPs) quickly attracted the attention of the scientific and medical community due to their properties that fit right in between those of semiconductors by incorporating its tunable conductivity and organic polymers by incorporating its facile synthesis, variation of mechanical properties, chemical stability, biocompatibility, and versatile morphology due to many possible synthesis approaches. Such a combination of properties and procedures made CPs suitable for biomedical applications. Through that, the first session of this book chapter provides an overview of the types of CPs most employed within the biomedical field, how their properties promote the response of cells, and a broad discussion for their property's optimization processes. The following session discusses in more detail the synthetic procedures to obtain CPs along with the strategies used to change their morphology, architecture, and incorporation of other components to address inherent challenges of the biomedical field such as ways to improve biocompatibility to promote cellular migration, tissue regeneration, cell interaction, and electric stimuli. Along with that, other approaches to improve biodegradability and decrease inflammatory response through recent examples from the literature are also discussed. The last session describes the main applications of CPs with in vitro and in vivo studies to explore their capabilities to perform tissue regeneration, use as synthetic skin, drug delivery systems, biosensing, neural electrode, among others.
