Smart carriers and nanohealers: A nanomedical insight on natural polymers

Sreejith Raveendran, Ankit K. Rochani, Toru Maekawa, D. Sakthi Kumar

    Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Biodegradable polymers are popularly being used in an increasing number of fields in the past few decades. The popularity and favorability of these materials are due to their remarkable properties, enabling a wide range of applications and market requirements to be met. Polymer biodegradable systems are a promising arena of research for targeted and site-specific controlled drug delivery, for developing artificial limbs, 3D porous scaffolds for cellular regeneration or tissue engineering and biosensing applications. Several natural polymers have been identified, blended, functionalized and applied for designing nanoscaffolds and drug carriers as a prerequisite for enumerable bionano technological applications. Apart from these, natural polymers have been well studied and are widely used in material science and industrial fields. The present review explains the prominent features of commonly used natural polymers (polysaccharides and proteins) in various nanomedical applications and reveals the current status of the polymer research in bionanotechnology and science sectors.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number929
    JournalMaterials
    Volume10
    Issue number8
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 10 Aug 2017

    Bibliographical note

    This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).

    Keywords

    • Biopolymers
    • Drug delivery
    • Nanoparticles
    • Nanoscience
    • Polymers
    • Tissue engineering

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