Panu Kajander 1

Nanocellulose in a given medical application

Short introduction to biomedical applications of nanocellulose and

wound healing

Introduction

• Natural polymers: alginate, chitosan, gelatin, collagen, elastin, starch and cellulose

• Bacterial nanocellulose, BNC (or microbial cellulose, MC)• Low cost, biodegradability, biocompatibility, mechanical

properties, availability, sustainability, and low cytotoxicity

• Applications: Implants, drug delivery, wound healing, tissue engineering, antibacterial/antimicrobial activity, cardiovascular tissue replacement, cancer targeting, cornea replacement and biological detection.

Properties of ideal wound dressing (Czaja et al. 2007)

Gauze dressings

• Topical application in wound healing

• Burns and chronic wounds

• Increase in tissue generation, capillary formation and proliferation in wound area

Advantages

• Confortability to various body counters

• Maintains proper water balance

• Reduces wound pain• Faster tissue

regeneration• Better healing effect• Lower inflammatory

response

Main conclusions

Numbers of publications in the period 2000–2013 on cellulose materials for biomedical applications. The topic keywords (SciFinder): cellulose, implants, tissue engineering, drug delivery, antibacterial/antimicrobial, cardiovascular, and wound healing.(Jorfi & Foster, 2014)

• BNC has morphological similarities with collagen attractive for cell immobilization and cell support

• Due to durability and compatibility, BNCs are suitable for tissue engineering

Outlook:• Surface functionalization

with bioactive molecules (eg pharmaceuticals, growth factors ect.)

• Interactions between biomaterial and living tissue can be tuned by the form (eg hydrogel, solid film..)

References• Mehdi Jorfi, E. Johan Foster. 2014. Recent advances in nanocellulose for

biomedical applications. Journal of Applied Polymer Science. Vol 132, issue 14, pp. 1097-4628. DOI: 10.1002/app.41719. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/app.41719

• Lina Fu,ad Yue Zhang,a Chao Li,b Zhihong Wu,c Qi Zhuo,e Xia Huang,b Guixing Qiu,c Ping Zhou and Guang Yang. 2012. Skin tissue repair materials from bacterial cellulose by a multilayer fermentation method. J. Mater. Chem., 2012, 22, 12349 DOI: 10.1039/c2jm00134a

• Czaja WK, Young DJ, Kawecki M, Brown RM Jr..2007. The future prospects of microbial cellulose in biomedical applications. Biomacromolecules. 2007 Jan;8(1):1-12.

• http://www.fibrocellscience.com/technology/technology-overview/