Alginate Electrospinning: Challenges and Solutions

Electrospinning, as a versatile nanofiber fabrication method, has evinced a lot ofattention due to its simplicity, efficiency and ability to produce continuous nanofibers.However, electrospinning of natural polymers such as proteins and polysaccharides seemsto be challenging for different reasons mainly in the absence of appropriate solvent, highviscosity or in some cases polyelectrolyte nature of solutions. Among natural polymers,alginate with its abundant algal source, structural and chemical resemblance to extracellularmatrix and desirable properties like biocompatibility and biodegradability, has attracted theattention of researchers extensively. Alginate has a great potential in many applications indifferent areas in medicine including tissue engineering, drug delivery and wound dressingfabrication. Also a vast number of studies in literature have focused on fabricating alginatenanofibers through electrospinning, no considerable success in achieving nanofibers withhigh alginate content has been reported. Through evaluating different studies and reports inthis regard, it becomes evident that part of the challenge is due to the lack of a comprehensivedescription focused on investigating and analyzing the conducted studies and underlyingstrategies. Hence, the aim of this review is to examine challenges and obstacles in alginateelectrospinning and to open discussions in literature, in order to pave the way for moreintended and successful research in this field.