Natural Polymer-Based Hydrogels: From Polymer to Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Hydrogels prepared from natural polymer have attracted extensive attention in biomedical fields such as drug delivery, wound healing, and regenerative medicine due to their good biocompatibility, degradability, and flexibility. This review outlines the commonly used natural polymer in hydrogel preparation, including cellulose, chitosan, collagen/gelatin, alginate, hyaluronic acid, starch, guar gum, agarose, and dextran. The polymeric structure and process/synthesis of natural polymers are illustrated, and natural polymer-based hydrogels including the hydrogel formation and properties are elaborated. Subsequently, the biomedical applications of hydrogels based on natural polymer in drug delivery, tissue regeneration, wound healing, and other biomedical fields are summarized. Finally, the future perspectives of natural polymers and hydrogels based on them are discussed. For natural polymers, novel technologies such as enzymatic and biological methods have been developed to improve their structural properties, and the development of new natural-based polymers or natural polymer derivatives with high performance is still very important and challenging. For natural polymer-based hydrogels, novel hydrogel materials, like double-network hydrogel, multifunctional composite hydrogels, and hydrogel microrobots have been designed to meet the advanced requirements in biomedical applications, and new strategies such as dual-cross-linking, microfluidic chip, micropatterning, and 3D/4D bioprinting have been explored to fabricate advanced hydrogel materials with designed properties for biomedical applications. Overall, natural polymeric hydrogels have attracted increasing interest in biomedical applications, and the development of novel natural polymer-based materials and new strategies/methods for hydrogel fabrication are highly desirable and still challenging.

Keywords: drug delivery; hydrogel; natural polymer; tissue engineering; wound healing.

Figure 1

The chemical structures of cellulose (a) and some important derivatives of cellulose (b).

Figure 2

The chemical structures of chitin (a) and chitosan (b).

Figure 3

The triple-helical fibrous structure of collagen.

Figure 4

The chemical structure of alginate and some alginate derivatives.

Figure 5

The chemical structure of hyaluronic acid.

Figure 6

Chemical structures of amylose (a) and amylopectin (b) in starch.

Figure 7

Chemical structure of guar gum.

Figure 8

Chemical structure of agarose.

Figure 9

Chemical structure of dextran.