Antibacterial and Reconstructive Applications of Gum Tragacanth Nanofibers

Recently, polymers have shown great potential in biological science. Natural polymers including polysaccharides with bacterial, animal and fungal sources are a good candidate to mimic structure of biological materials such as extracellular matrices. Therefore, they have gained much attentionin therapeutic and tissue engineering applications. Polysaccharides among all natural polymers show promising potential for preparation of nanostructured carriers. Nowadays, nanofilms, nanoparticles, and nanofibers are well known carriers for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. Gum tragacanth is a natural polymer and a complex carbohydrate including polysaccharide structure. It comprises excellent physical, chemical and biological properties such as thermal and mechanical behavior; biodegradability, biocompatibility, and antimicrobial effect on wound healing and burn infections. Previously, raw gum tragacanth used to be applied locally as a superabsorbent hydrogels, antibacterial nanocapsuls, and mucilage for would healing treatment and deep wound scar. In recent years nanofibers have shown potential in tissue scaffold and mats for delivery of therapeutic drugs. Researchers have developed methods to engineer nanostructured fibers and tuned physical parameters such as diameter, tensile modulus, and degradation properties. In this review some of the recent works on gum tragacanth nanofibers and incorporation with other polymeric materials are discussed. Antimicrobial and would healing characteristics of gum tragacanth is being highlighted.