Recent advances in polysaccharides based biomaterials for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications

Abstract

In this paper, a spotlight is shown on polysaccharides based biomaterials which have surfaced as a versatile platform for different biomedical applications including drug delivery and tissue regeneration. Herein, structure and unique properties of different polysaccharides are described along with various functionalization strategies. Additionally, a brief overview of different physical and chemical crosslinking approaches to design polysaccharides derived biomaterials is provided. Due to their inherent biocompatible and biodegradable properties, polysaccharides based biomaterials are being extensively explored for performing a difficult task under complex biological environment. Hence, recent developments in using polysaccharides derived functional biomaterials especially for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications are described here. The studies reviewed here motivate to fabricate novel polysaccharides based biomaterials with outstanding properties and functionality. Finally, various future possibilities to achieve their widespread commercial use are discussed.

Keywords

• Polysaccharides
• Biomaterials
• Crosslinking
• Drug delivery
• Tissue engineering