Main description:

Gellan Gum as a Biomedical Polymer details key topics and fundamental aspects of gellan gum and its biomedical applications in drug delivery, proteins and peptides delivery, cell delivery, tissue engineering, wound dressings and enzyme immobilizations in developing high quality products. Sections introduce gellan gum, its source, production and gelation mechanism, discuss biomedical materials, and provides ways it can be used for biomedical applications. The book also examines the used of gellan gum as pharmaceutical excipients for drug delivery. Future developments and challenges round out the book's coverage.

With contributions for an international group of experts, this book is a useful reference for scientists, researchers and those in industry engaged in biomedical product development using natural polysaccharides.

Contents:

Introduction
1. Gellan gum: Source, production, and gelation mechanism
2. Impact of environmental conditions on the preparation and functionality of gellan gum
3. Sol-gel behaviour of gellan gum and its applications in biomedical industry
4. Biomedical properties of gellan gum

Biomedical materials
5. Gellan gum-based biomedical gels
6. Gellan gum-based hydrogels as useful biomedical material
7. Gellan gum-based biocomposites
8. Gellan gum-based nanocomposite hydrogel
9. Gellan gum-based nanosystems for biomedical applications
10. Cross-linked gellan gum for biomedical applications
11. Grafted-gellan gum for biomedical applications

Biomedical applications
12. Tissue engineering applications of gellan gum
13. Gellan gum-based wound dressings
14. Cell encapsulation and delivery using gellan gum
15. Protein and peptide delivery using gellan gum
16. Uses of gellan gum for nutrient delivery
17. Uses of gellan gum for growth factor delivery

Pharmaceutical excipients
18. Uses of gellan gum in pharmaceutical tablets
19. Gellan gum-based microparticles and beads for sustained drug delivery
20. Nanoformulations of gellan gum for improved drug delivery
21. Gellan gum-based in situ gels for drug delivery
22. Gellan gum-based nasal formulations
23. Gellan gum-based ocular formulations
24. Gellan gum-based dermatological formulations
25. Gellan gum-based gastroretentive systems
26. Ionically-gelled gellan gum-based systems for controlled therapeutic release
27. Gellan gum-based interpenetrating polymer networks for sustained release drug delivery
28. Gellan gum-based polyelectrolyte complexes for sustained release drug delivery

Other Topics
29. Future perspectives and challenges of plant polysaccharides as pharmaceutical excipients