Potential applications of natural origin polymer-based systems in soft tissue regeneration

摘要

Despite the many advances in tissue engineering approaches, scientists still face significant challenges in trying torepair and replace soft tissues. Nature-inspired routes involving the creation of polymer-based systems of naturalorigins constitute an interesting alternative route to produce novel materials. The interest in these materials comesfrom the possibility of constructing multi-component systems that can be manipulated by composition allowingone to mimic the tissue environment required for the cellular regeneration of soft tissues. For this purpose, factorssuch as the design, choice, and compatibility of the polymers are considered to be key factors for successfulstrategies in soft tissue regeneration. More recently, polysaccharide-protein based systems have being increasinglystudied and proposed for the treatment of soft tissues. The characteristics, properties, and compatibility of theresulting materials investigated in the last 10 years, as well as commercially available matrices or those currentlyunder investigation are the subject matter of this review.