After more than 20 years of developing and producing custom polymer compounds for biomedical applications, Foster Corporation (Putnam, CT) has intensified its efforts, opening its Medical Plastics Innovation Center to offer comprehensive development service of polymer formulations and compounds for leading edge medical devices.

"As the market for medical devices evolves, materials of construction become more critical," said Larry Acquarulo, CEO of Foster Corporation. "For example, within the last 20 years the outside diameter of a typical angiographic catheter has decreased by 70% while the working pressures have increased well over 100%. This was made possible by improvements in polymer technologies. Our Medical Plastics Innovation Center was created to provide comprehensive development and evaluation of next generation materials for our customers, from sample production to process and property evaluation."

Adept in radiopaque compounds, custom polymer blends, and custom-colored polymers for minimally invasive devices, Foster notes that nanocomposite reinforced polymers and melt-filtered materials increasingly are needed to reach new standards for size reduction and higher performance. The Center is designed to support these new developments, as well as for infection control materials with antimicrobial additives and polymers tailored for long-term implants.

Foster Corporation, a PolyMedex Discovery Group company, notes that the new Center, located within the company's headquarters facility, offers polymer compounding, molding and extrusion process evaluation, and materials property testing, including an environmental oven for testing polymer stability. Also, its injection molding equipment is suitable for making test samples for mechanical and environmental testing.