Recent advances in the field of lactic acid/glycolic acid polymer‐based therapeutic systems

Abstract The mechanism of degradation of bioresorbable lactic acid‐ and glycolic acid‐based aliphatic polyesters (PLA/GA) is still far from being totally understood although a majority of authors agree to consider in vivo degradation as essentially hydrolytic. In the past years, we have shown that hydrolysis of large size devices is heterogeneous, i.e. faster inside than at the surface because of reaction‐diffusion phenomena involving acid‐catalyzed ester cleavage reactions and water‐soluble macromolecular fragments. The proposed mechanism is recalled together with some direct or indirect consequences, namely induced crystallization at body temperature, size‐ and formulation‐dependence of the degradation rates. From these features, one can conclude that it is now possible to increase or decrease the degradation rate and to turn on or off heterogeneous degradation by using accelerating or braking factors, however, accurate piloting of the hydrolytic degradation of PLA/GA is still not feasible.