Polysaccharides, as biological macromolecule-based platforms in skeletal muscle tissue engineering: a systematic review

Traumatic injuries to skeletal muscles caused by accidents, surgeries, and strains result in a significant disability. Currently, the golden standard of treatment for skeletal muscle injuries is tissue grafting. However, this treatment strategy is associated with several challenges. Therefore, developing alternative strategies is highly demanded. In this context, skeletal muscle tissue engineering (SMTE) aims to regenerate defective muscle tissue using combinations of cells, growth factors, and biomaterials. Although significant progress has been made in SMTE, the inherent complexity of skeletal muscle tissue requires a versatile approach to develop scaffolds with high similarity to native muscle tissue. These scaffolds can be produced using synthetic or natural polymers. Among different biomaterial options, polysaccharides are ideal scaffolding platforms with potential applicability in different biomedical fields, such as drug delivery, guided tissue regeneration, and driving stem cells fate. Due to their versatile properties, biocompatibility, low cost, high availability, low immunogenicity, surface modification capabilities, and processability, the appeal of polysaccharides in SMTE is on the rise. Although different polysaccharides can be potentially used in SMTE, only alginate, chitosan, cellulose, and hyaluronic acid have been studied. In the current review, the recent progress, applications, and challenges of polysaccharides in SMTE will be highlighted.