Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXVI, Issue 2
Written by Fawzia SHAAT, Ramona-Daniela PAVALOIU, Cristina HLEVCA
This review highlights the applications of pullulan in biomedical field, focusing on drug delivery. Pullulan is a microbial exo-polysaccharide produced by yeast like fungus Aureobasidium pullulans and it has been declared safe by FDA in United States and has GRAS status. Pullulan has biocompatible, biodegradable, non-mutagenic, non-toxic, non-carcinogenic, non-immunogenic properties, as well as other functional properties. Furthermore, pullulan can be easily derivatized by several chemical reactions such as etherification, amidification, esterification, oxidation and co-polymerization in order to widen its applications. Due to its unique features pullulan and its derivative is being explored for various biomedical applications like drug and gene delivery, tissue engineering, wound healing, diagnostic imaging, etc. This research was supported through Nucleu project PN 1941-04 01.
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