Photopolymerization is a widely explored technology that has recently been recognized to have also great potentialities in the biomedical field. This paper aims to provide a general overview of this technology by briefly describing materials and methods used to produce linear or crosslinked polymer networks for drug delivery, tissue engineering and cell encapsulation. In addition, potentialities and areas of investigation that are not fully explored but that could provide solutions for better control over the technology when applied to the biomedical field will be indicated as wen. (c) 2006 Society of Chemical Industry.