Advances and prospects of Bletilla striata polysaccharide as promising multifunctional biomedical materials

Bletilla striata polysaccharide (BSP) is a kind of natural hydrophilic polymers derived from Bletilla striata with a history of over 1500 years. Recently, it arouses increasing interest of researchers in both basic research, material design and clinical transformation area, because of its potential pharmacological activities. More importantly, BSP as promising biomaterials exhibits distinct physicochemical properties (e.g. solubility, viscosity, film-forming ability), biocompatibility, biodegradability and structural modifiability. Unmodified BSP is usually made into hydrogels, sponges, microneedles, films and lyophilized wafers alone or composed with other materials, whereas chemical modified BSP is mainly prepared into micelles, microspheres, nanoparticles, nanofibers and biological scaffolds. The diverse BSP-based biomaterials can be broadly used in wound healing, targeted drug delivery, and tissue engineering, having great research and application values in material science and biomedical engineering. Herein, the research is started with the preparation, characterization and structure properties of BSP. With perspectives for their potential applications, BSP-based biomaterials before and after modification are summarized and emphasized. Besides, the current challenges and future perspectives of BSP-based biomaterials are also highlighted. It is envisioned that this review will provide the directions for the further exploitation of BSP as multifunctional materials in biomedicine fields and help to understand the natural biopolymers.