A study about processing and synthesis by plasma of porous biomaterials based in pyrrole and ethylene glycol is presented. The objective is to obtain porous copolymers with NH and OH groups to be applied as biomaterials. The monomers were copolymerized by resistive glow discharges in a tubular glass reactor at 10-1 mbar and 40-60 W using iodine as dopant and water as oxidant agents. The polymers were obtained as powder and thin films with some pores. The films were swollen with water and subjected to a treatment based on liquid absorption and rapid temperature changes to freeze the liquid trapped in the copolymer. With this procedure new pores were created, some isolated and others interconnected with average diameter between 0.13 µm and 10.75 µm. The morphology was studied by SEM. The results indicate that this material could increase the interaction with cells with the enlarged surface provided by the pores.

There is a growing interest in microbial lipase production due to its great potential for industrial applications such as food additives, industrial reagents and stain removers, as well as for medical applications. Specially for medical applications a high degree of purity is required, which is accomplished with high resolution chromatographic techniques. Affinity chromatography is considered a very high resolution chromatographic technique. In this work the adsorption isotherms and kinetics of the adsorption of lipase from Geotrichum sp on biospecific resin were determined. The resin was prepared using EAH sepharose 4B gel (Pharmacia), made to react with oleic acid as the specific ligand.The lipase was produced in a five-liter fermenter, with both complex and synthetic media. Fermentation conditions were a temperature of 30°C, an aeration of 1VVM and an agitation of 400 rpm. Maximum lipase activity was around 28 U/ml after 10 hours of fermentation for the complex medium. The kinetic model and parameters were determined by dynamic fitting to experimental results using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method.