Polysaccharide-Based Self-Healing Hydrogels

Self-healing hydrogels have gained massive interest recently for biomedical applications because of their remarkable ability to regenerate once damaged. However, designing such hydrogels with dynamic self-repair capability, mechanical stability, and biocompatibility remains challenging to date. The hydrogel must essentially comply with the structural, biological, compositional, physical, and mechanical properties of the native tissue environment. In this context, polysaccharide-based hydrogels have attracted attention due to their unique attributes, including biocompatibility and degradability. Hence, this chapter exclusively discusses the mechanism, chemistry, and fabrication techniques of self-healing hydrogels that are polysaccharide-based, emphasizing their suitability for applications in biomedical engineering. This chapter also provides an overview of the various qualitative and quantitative techniques to assess the healing performance of polysaccharide-based hydrogels, including visual, rheological, mechanical, and physicochemical characterization. Finally, this chapter will summarize the potential applications of these hydrogels in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, antibacterial-coupled wound healing capabilities, and 3D cell culture studies.