along with other polysaccharides (e.g., celluloses, chitosan, etc.), is indeed considered an extremely promising material in the viewpoint of circular economy and in substituting petroleum-derived polymers. [3] Among others, one of the reasons for alginate success is its unique capability to bind different cations leading to stable and tailor-made hydrogels. [4] Owing to its biocompatibility, biodegradability, and nontoxicity, in the past decades alginate has been vastly explored for drug and gene delivery, tissue engineering, and wound healing applications. [5] In this sense, the recent nanotechnological advances have allowed the fabrication and exploitation of alginate-based nanostructured materials with completely new capabilities. Thereby, it is not surprising that nowadays a broad variety of alginate-based nanomaterials with various shapes, sizes, and compositions are prepared via different approaches, including controlled gelation, electrospinning and electrospraying, self-assembly, phase-separation, and micro fluidics., All these nanostructures hold the potential to interact with living organisms much more efficiently with respect to bulk systems, hence leading to specific functionalities at the same time avoiding the occurrence of toxicity issues. [6][7][8] Despite the use of alginate-based nanomaterials has been reviewed in the past, the focus has been commonly pointed to their generic properties and applications. Conversely, this review attempts to provide a more specific and comprehensive summary limited to the most recent advances in the fabrication and use of two of the most common and promising alginatebased nanomaterials, namely nanoparticles (NPs) and electrospun nanofibers (NFs), with a focus on biomedical and pharmaceutical applications.
