Biomedical applications of microbial cellulose nanocomposites

Microbial cellulose (MC) is a polysaccharide excreted extracellularly by certain bacteria. The species Gluconacetobacter xylinus (or Acetobacter xylinum as formerly known) is the most extensively studied cellulose-producing bacteria (Czaja et al., 2006). MC exhibits some unique features such as impressive mechanical strength, crystallinity (Blaker et al., 2010), water-holding capacity, purity, and in situ moldability, which are superior to those of plant cellulose (Klemm et al., 2001). MC presents an ultrafine nanofibril network (Wan et al., 2006). These characteristics render MC, which has been traditionally used in food industry and recently in the production of reinforced paper, valuable for biomedical applications (Shah et al., 2013). Its applications in artificial blood vessels, temporary skin substitutes, wound dressings (Shah et al., 2013), and scaffolds for tissue engineering of cartilage and bone have been reported. In vitro and in vivo studies have showed that MC is biocompatible. It has been studied as replacement in blood vessels in rats (Grande et al., 2009) and pigs (Bäckdahl et al., 2011). MC has the potential to be used in biodegradable nanocomposites. Different composites of MC have been studied. The component other than MC is determined based on the composite application, including vascular graft or bone regeneration and based on the properties required to be imparted to MC, such as biological activity or antimicrobicity (Shah et al., 2013). © 2016 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC