ABSTRACT
Medical devices have improved millions of lives by providing mechanical and material solutions to biomedical problems. Medical devices are therapeutically applied in a variety of clinical disciplines, including cardiovascular medicine, orthopedics, and neurology, and new materials are in use or under development for nearly every organ system in the body. Traditional medical devices are constructed from polymers, ceramics, glasses, and metals.[1] Although these materials represent a signiŠcant advance in medicine, traditional medical devices suffer from several limitations. Implanted medical devices may be prone to cause infection,[2,3] thrombosis, in‘ammation, and poor healing;[4] these biological responses can limit the lifetime of implanted devices.[5] In addition, implanted devices typically do not respond to changes in the surrounding biological environment and have limited biological activity.
