Emerging Trends of Natural-Based Polymeric Systems

Tissue engineering is the most promising therapeutic approach, in which damaged or diseased tissuesare regenerated by using different biomaterials with or without various drug molecules like antibiotics,proteins, growth factors etc. Different biomaterials have been proposed for drug delivery in tissueengineering applications. Among them, natural occurring polymers are the most attractive options,mainly due to the readily availability from natural sources, similarities with the extracellular matrix(ECM), chemical versatility, good biological performances, and low processing cost. The presentpaper intends to overview a wide range of natural-based polymeric systems (both naturalpolysaccharidic systems and natural protein-origin systems) that found applications for drug deliveryin tissue engineering field.