Bacterial cellulose based nanocomposites offer options for moldability and combination: study

Biocompatible materials and devices have attracted a great deal of interest over the past years in the medical field. Ongoing efforts from many researchers are providing novel systems that mimic the main peculiar details of native tissues. Particularly, biocompatible materials engineered with improved functionalities and complex design have been proved to offer better cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation.

Generally, biomaterials are in direct contact with biological tissues and they can be defined as part of a system that deals with improving or replacing any tissue, organ, or body function. Therefore, it is fundamental to carefully consider some requirements to appoint a material as a biomaterial, such as excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability and lack of toxicity.

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a natural polymer that has fascinating attributes, such as biocompatibility, low cost, and ease of processing, being considered a very interesting biomaterial due to its options for moldability and combination. Thus, BC-based compounds (for example, BC/collagen, BC/gelatin, BC/fibroin, BC/chitosan, etc.) have improved properties and/or functionality, allowing for various biomedical applications, such as artificial blood vessels and microvessels, artificial skin, and wounds dressing among others. Despite the wide applicability in biomedicine and tissue engineering, there is a lack of updated scientific reports on applications related to dentistry, since BC has great potential for this. It has been used mainly in the regeneration of periodontal tissue, surgical dressings, intraoral wounds, and in the regeneration of pulp tissue.