Natural gums of plant and microbial origin for tissue engineering applications

In the last decade, natural gums (NGs) have received much attention for developing polymeric systems for different applications, including food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetic, and biomedical applications. NGs are naturally occurring polysaccharides that are mainly obtained from microbes, plants, and marine origin. The extensive use of the NGs has been reasoned to their inherent biocompatibility, biodegradability, and nonimmunogenic properties. Among the various biomedical applications wherein NGs have been extensively explored, tissue engineering is one such area. The use of NGs for tissue engineering applications has opened up a new dimension in tissue engineering research. This chapter identified the most commonly used plant and microbial origin NGs for tissue engineering applications by scientometric analysis. It was found that the most commonly used NGs of aforesaid categories include gellan gum, xanthan gum, and guar gum. After the identification of these NGs, their properties and applications in tissue engineering research have been discussed.