Gels in Biomedical Applications: An overview on wound healing and tissue engineering

M. FERNANDA HORST; MARIELA A. AGOTEGARAY

Advances in physicochemical properties of biopolymers

Bentham Publishing

Año: 2017; p. 766 - 792

Biopolymer hydrogels present diverse applications in medicine due to theirbiocompatibility, biodegradability and low immunogenicity. The specific featuresrelated to swelling, holding a large amount of water while maintaining, in addition tothe ease of taking different shapes, make them the selected biomaterials as componentfor diverse bio-applications: contact lenses, injectable or implantable drug deliverydevices and as platforms intended for wound healing and tissue engineering. In general,the restriction associated to the use of hydrogels in biomedicine lies in the poormechanical properties associated to the natural biopolymers. This problem can besolved by the use of other materials during the synthesis procedure. In this chaptergeneral synthesis methodologies and last innovations in terms of gelatin, collagen andhyaluronic acid hydrogels for wound care and tissue engineering are reviewed. Theselection of the biopolymers was based on their suitable features for biomedicalapplications. The specific clinical challenges for wound healing and tissue engineeringare attractive to face in order to join science and marketing. This implies consideringthe current increasing market associated to hydrogel employment for wound care andtreatment as well as the requirement to develop concise clinical hydrogelsimplementation on the replacement of diverse tissue and organs.