Acute or chronic brain injuries promote deaths and the life-long debilitating neurological status where, despite advances in therapeutic strategies, clinical outcome hardly achieves total patient recovery. In recent decades, brain tissue engineering emerged as an encouraging area of research for helping in damaged central nervous system (CNS) recovery. Polysaccharides are abundant naturally occurring biomacromolecules with a great potential enhancement of advanced technologies in brain tissue repair and regeneration (BTRR). Besides carrying rich biological information, polysaccharides can interact and communicate with biomolecules, including glycosaminoglycans present in cell membranes and many signaling moieties, growth factors, chemokines, and axon guidance molecules. This review includes a comprehensive investigation of the current progress on designing and developing polysaccharide-based soft matter biomaterials for BTRR. Although few interesting reviews concerning BTRR have been reported, this is the first report specifically focusing on covering multiple polysaccharides and polysaccharide-based functionalized biomacromolecules in this emerging and intriguing field of multidisciplinary knowledge. This review aims to cover the state of art challenges and prospects of this fascinating field while presenting the richness of possibilities of using these natural biomacromolecules for advanced biomaterials in prospective neural tissue engineering applications.
Keywords: Biomacromolecules; Biopolymers; Hydrogels; Polysaccharides; Scaffolds; Tissue engineering.
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