Versatile Application of Nanocellulose: From Industry to Skin Tissue Engineering and Wound Healing

Abstract

Nanocellulose is cellulose in the form of nanostructures, i.e., features not exceeding 100 nm at least in one dimension. These nanostructures include nanofibrils, found in bacterial cellulose; nanofibers, present particularly in electrospun matrices; and nanowhiskers, nanocrystals, nanorods, and nanoballs. These structures can be further assembled into bigger two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) nano-, micro-, and macro-structures, such as nanoplatelets, membranes, films, microparticles, and porous macroscopic matrices. There are four main sources of nanocellulose: bacteria (Gluconacetobacter), plants (trees, shrubs, herbs), algae (Cladophora), and animals (Tunicata). Nanocellulose has emerged for a wide range of industrial, technology, and biomedical applications, namely for adsorption, ultrafiltration, packaging, conservation of historical artifacts, thermal insulation and fire retardation, energy extraction and storage, acoustics, sensorics, controlled drug delivery, and particularly for tissue engineering. Nanocellulose is promising for use in scaffolds for engineering of blood vessels, neural tissue, bone, cartilage, liver, adipose tissue, urethra and dura mater, for repairing connective tissue and congenital heart defects, and for constructing contact lenses and protective barriers. This review is focused on applications of nanocellulose in skin tissue engineering and wound healing as a scaffold for cell growth, for delivering cells into wounds, and as a material for advanced wound dressings coupled with drug delivery, transparency and sensorics. Potential cytotoxicity and immunogenicity of nanocellulose are also discussed.

Keywords: algal nanocellulose; animal nanocellulose; antimicrobial properties; bacterial nanocellulose; cell delivery; drug delivery; nanofibrillated cellulose; tissue engineering; tissue repair; wound dressing.

Figure 1

The number of publications on nanocellulose found in three databases: ProQuest (green), Web of Science (WOS, red), and PubMed (blue) from 2006 to 2018 using the search term “nanocellulose.”

Figure 2

Morphology of human dermal fibroblasts on day 4 after seeding on a cellulose mesh modified with cationic cellulose nanofibers (A), with anionic cellulose nanofibers (B), and on pristine cellulose mesh (C). The cells were stained with phalloidine conjugated with TRITC (stains F-actin, red fluorescence). Leica TCS SPE DM2500 confocal microscope (Leica Microsystems, Wetzlar, Germany), obj. 20×/1.15 NA oil.

Figure 3

Human dermal fibroblasts on bacterial cellulose in a pristine state (Pristine), loaded with curcumin (C) or with degraded curcumin at 180 °C (DC 180) or at 300°C (DC 300) after seven days of cell seeding. The cells were stained with Texas Red C2-Maleimide (red fluorescence, cell membrane and cytoplasm) and Hoechst #33258 (blue fluorescence, cell nuclei). Olympus IX 50 microscope, obj. 10x, DP 70 digital camera (Olympus, Tokyo, Japan).