Seaweed polysaccharides and their potential biomedical applications

Over the past two decades numerous studies have been reported on seaweeds-derived polysaccharides for biomedical and biological applications (tissue engineering, drug delivery, wound healing, and biosensor). Alginate, carrageenan, fucoidan, and ulvan are widely used marine derived polysaccharides for biological and biomedical applications due to their biocompatibility and availability. The gel forming property of alginate has increased its applications in tissue engineering and drug delivery as an extracellular matrix and delivery vehicle, respectively. Other sulfated polysaccharides such as carrageenan and fucoidan show promising application in tissue engineering due to their capacity of inducing important osteogenic, adipogenic, and chondrogenic differentiation in stem cells. In this review, we explained the extraction/isolation methods and applications of these seaweed derived polysaccharides as well as their roles in therapeutics, drug delivery, and tissue engineering.