Gellan gum-based Hydrogels for Tissue Engineering Applications

Hydrogels have been attracting great deal of attention in tissue engineering for its resemblance to tissue’s extracellular matrix. In this chapter, it is provided an overview of the current advances on the gellan gum (GG) based hydrogels preclinical research. Although this exopolysaccharide possess many advantages, blending with other polymers and ceramics, chemical modification and functionalization have been the most attempted strategies for optimizing its physicochemical and biological properties. The GG-based hydrogels showed so far, great promise as tunable biomaterials in a wide range of regenerative strategies. But, its wider use in tissue regeneration will be greatly determined by the advances on microscale processing techniques that will enable to best mimic living tissues multiscale organization and certainly improve its functionality.