Bioactive Hydrogels: Design and Characterization of Cellulose-Derived Injectable Composites.

Cellulose represents a low cost, abundant, and renewable polysaccharide with great versatility; it has a hierarchical structure composed of nanofibers with high aspect ratio (3-4 nm wide, hundreds of μm long). TEMPO-mediated oxidation represents one of the most diffused methods to obtain cellulose nanofibers (CNFs): It is possible to obtain physically crosslinked hydrogels by means of divalent cation addition. The presence of inorganic components, such as calcium phosphates (CaP), can improve not only their mechanical properties but also the bioactivity of the gels.