Alginate-based bionanocomposites in wound dressings

Alginate is a naturally occurring biopolymer which has been widely used to design materials for wound dressing. The attractive features of alginate include biocompatibility, biodegradability, antibacterial activity, hydrophilicity, and nontoxicity. Alginate accelerates wound healing by providing a moist environment around the wound, removing wound exudate, and restricting the colonization of microorganism. The properties such as mechanical, water adsorption, biodegradability, and cell affinity of the alginate are generally improved by incorporating it with polymers and nanoparticles. The alginate has often been encapsulated with several drugs to enhance its wound healing properties. In this review, we discussed about the recent literature about several types of alginate-based nanocomposite for wound healing application. This chapter gives an overview of the recent developments of alginate-based materials in wound dressing, which outlines the characteristic properties of different alginate-based wound dressing materials.