Polysaccharide Based Hydrogels in Drug Delivery Systems, Wound Healing, and Agriculture

Natural polysaccharides have immense features that enable them to be prime candidates for development of biodegradable, biocompatible and stimuli responsive double network (DN) hydrogels. These DN hydrogels are used in biomedical applications as smart polymeric drug delivery systems, tissue engineering and wound dressings. Presence of a plethora of functional groups makes them amenable/ susceptible to chemical modification which, in some instances, imparts the ability respond to different external stimuli. The most striking feature about these hydrogels is their versatility but one major drawback is their slow response to external stimuli. This drawback can be overcome through chemical or physical crosslinking two different polymers making it possible to design and fabricate novel hydrogels with superior structural and desirable properties. Compared to synthetic polymers, polysaccharide-based hydrogels are ideal surrogates for their synthetic counterparts with several advantages such as their biocompatibility, biodegradability, renewability and relative abundance. Moreover, their functionality can be enhanced through material blending and biofunctionalization to impart good mechanical stability, stimuli responsiveness, enhanced swelling capacity to enable them function as smart drug carriers, soft matter, surrogates for tissue engineering, and sensors in both biomedical and non-biomedical fields.