The Use of Natural Polysaccharides as Biomaterials

摘要

The interest towards polysaccharides of natural origin is continuously growing during the past decade. Fields of interest for their applications are widening, ranging between ecocommodities, food supplements, cosmetics, pharmaceu-ticals, and biomedical uses. Exploitation of new sources of polysaccharides of different origin is well documented in recent literature. Since this tendency is involving biomaterials science in a pressing way, this journal set up to publish a special issue devoted to this topic. The result is a collection of twelve original research articles, whose authors belong to academic or research institutions of eleven different countries from Asia, Europe, and Australia. Papers are representative of a large share of biomedical applications, related chemical modifications, and manufacturing methodologies.