Regenerated Cellulose and Composites for Biomedical Applications

The growing demand for bio-based materials is gaining traction in biomedical fields like tissue engineering and drug delivery (Khan et al. in Inorg. Chem. Commun. 134, 2021). Polysaccharides, which are long-chain biopolymeric carbohydrate molecules composed primarily of monosaccharide units, are bio-based materials that combine enormous potential in biomedical applications with the distinct advantages of natural polymers over synthetic polymers (Zamel and Khan in Polym. Adv. Technol. 32:4587–4597, 2021). Cellulose is one of the most common biopolymers on the planet, originating primarily from plants, wood, and bacteria. It is made up of randomly assembled, 100 nm wide ribbon-shaped fibrils that are made up of 7–8 nm wide elementary nanofibrils aggregated in bundles (Gorgieva and Trček in Nanomaterials 9:1352, 2019). As such, it offers a unique combination of properties, including flexibility, high water holding capacity, hydrophilicity, crystallinity, moldability in various morphologies, elevated purity with no lignin or hemicellulose, and a biomimetic three-dimensional (3D) network. Because of these characteristics, this type of cellulose is gaining popularity for various medical applications (Seddiqi in Cellulose 28:1893–1931, 2021; Zamel in Sci. Rep. 9:1–11, 2019). Due to their suitable physical and mechanical properties, cellulose and its derivatives have attracted considerable attention as biocompatible polymers for applications in the biomedical field. Cellulose naturally develops functionality, flexibility, and high specific strength (Ansari in Compos. A Appl. Sci. Manuf. 74:60–68, 2015). Graphical Abstract: A radial diagram for biomedical applications of cellulose with an illustration of 3 polymer chains in between. The applications include tissue engineering, antiaging, antioxidant, dentistry, anticancer, and antibacterial. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.