Characteristics of Marine Biomaterials and Their Applications in Biomedicine

Abstract

Oceans have vast potential to develop high-value bioactive substances and biomaterials. In the past decades, many biomaterials have come from marine organisms, but due to the wide variety of organisms living in the oceans, the great diversity of marine-derived materials remains explored. The marine biomaterials that have been found and studied have excellent biological activity, unique chemical structure, good biocompatibility, low toxicity, and suitable degradation, and can be used as attractive tissue material engineering and regenerative medicine applications. In this review, we give an overview of the extraction and processing methods and chemical and biological characteristics of common marine polysaccharides and proteins. This review also briefly explains their important applications in anticancer, antiviral, drug delivery, tissue engineering, and other fields.

Keywords: biomedical applications; collagen; extraction methods; marine biomaterials; marine polysaccharides; tissue engineering.

Figure 1

(a) Chitin recovery by chemical and biological methods [12]. (b) Structural formula of chitin and chitosan. (c) An instance of chitosan modification [18].

Figure 2

Stylized conformation structures of alginate units, blocks, and their linkages M unit: β-d-mannuronic acid residue; G unit: α-l-guluronic acid residues. Alginates are extracted and purified from various brown algae and have the gelation ability.

Figure 3

(a) Chemical structures of idealized repeating units of carrageenan; (b) two types of fucoidan backbones. R is the potential attachment of carbohydrate (α-l-fucopyranose and α-d-glucuronicacid) and non-carbohydrate (sulfate and acetyl groups) substituents; (c) structure of the major repeating disaccharide units that comprise ulvan; (d) schematic illustration of laminarin structure and its derivatives.

Figure 4

Repeating disaccharide units of different GAGs. CS chains are constituted of d-glucuronic (GlcA) and N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) residues. DS is a stereoisomer of CS, including l-iduronic acid (IdoA) instead of or in addition to GlcA [76]. KS is composed of different combinations of repeating units of d-galactose (Gal) and GlcNAc [76]. HS chains comprise GlcA and d-glucosamine (GlcN). Heparin chains comprise IdoA and GlcN. These sugar residues can be esterified by sulfate at various positions as indicated by “X” or “Y” enclosed by a circle [79].

Figure 5

Collagen structure and the sequential amino acid contents along with the structure, and obtaining gelatin from collagen denatured by thermal and chemical treatment.

Figure 6

Carrageenan may be used to specifically target the viral attachment of SARS-CoV-2. The figure is reprinted from Ref. [50] with permission from the publisher.

Figure 7

Interrelations of marine origin polysaccharides in drug delivery systems for advanced therapies and applications. The figure is reprinted from Ref. [138] with permission from the publisher.

Figure 8

Schematic showing the wide range of applications for marine biomaterial.

Figure 9

(A) Immunofluorescence detection of representative chondrogenic-related markers, SOX-9 and ACAN under basal and chondrogenic conditions after 21 days of culture on the Coll and Coll: Hya structures (Scale bar: 50 μm). (B) Representative microscopic observation of the repaired tissues at 3 and 6 months postoperatively. Red circles indicate the defect area. (C) ICRS score for macroscopic assessment. Data are presented as the mean ± SD (n = 8). (D) Antibacterial activity of TiO2 nanoparticles and scaffolds. ((A) was reproduced from Ref. [170] with permission from the publisher; (B,C) were reproduced from Ref. [171] with permission from the publisher; (D) was reproduced from Ref. [174] with permission from the publisher).