Fabrication challenges and trends in biomedical applications of alginate electrospun nanofibers

Electrospun Alginate Nanofibers Toward Various Applications: A Review

“…: high biocompatibility, fairly low immunogenicity, cheaper and excellent gel-forming capacity, as well as structural resemblance to proteoglycans (glycosaminoglycan (GAG)), which is a major component of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in human tissue. It has been one of the commonly employed biomaterials in various biomedical applications ranging from wound dressing and drug delivery to tissue engineering [5][6][7][8].…”

“…This is driven by its applications in food, textile, drugs, and clinical wound dressing. Alginate, also known as algin or alganic acid, is one of the natural polysaccharides found in the cell walls of brown algae [8][9][10][11]. It can also be produced by two bacteria genera, i.e., Azotobacter and Pseudomonas [9].…”

“…It is a linear copolymer composed of β-d-mannurate (M) and α-l-guluronate, which are linked through the 1-4 glycosidic bonds. It was first isolated from brown algae in 1880; however, its commercial production only began in the 20th century [8,12,13]. The properties of alginate directly depend on the sequence and composition of the M/G units.…”

“…The electrospinning technique serve as reliable processing method that is available to fashion different polymeric materials into nanofibrous materials, having a large surface area and malleable porosity. However, it is recognized that the electrospinnability (meaning the possibility of fabricating bead-free nanofibers) of alginate, similar to any other natural polymer, pose some difficulties [5][6][7][8]. This has been attributed to the several aspects, such as their polyelectrolytic nature, rigid intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen network, lack of solubility, and high gelation at fairly low concentrations [5][6][7][8].…”

“…However, it is recognized that the electrospinnability (meaning the possibility of fabricating bead-free nanofibers) of alginate, similar to any other natural polymer, pose some difficulties [5][6][7][8]. This has been attributed to the several aspects, such as their polyelectrolytic nature, rigid intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen network, lack of solubility, and high gelation at fairly low concentrations [5][6][7][8]. In order to overcome these issues, the electrospinnable polymers (e.g., polyethylene oxide (PEO) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)), strong polar solvents, and alginate modifications have been employed to facilitate its electrospinnability, as it will be discussed in the next sections.…”