Preface

Naturally-derived biomaterials (Materials derived from different organisms including animals, plants and microorganisms) invite immense interest from diverse segments of science including chemistry, physics, materials sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, etc. Although the last few decades have witnessed a thriving effort towards understanding the ongoing research with biomaterials as synthons, yet biomaterial research never fails to create surprises.

This book was conceived with the idea to summarize the modern knowledge of this field as well as lay the foundation principles for researchers and engineers from different backgrounds interested in exploring new research avenues within biomaterial sciences. For instance, the first chapter helps to lay the foundations of peptide chemistry and presents the toolsets that can be used to address / overcome the challenges associated with the design and development of peptides and peptidomimetics with desired functionalities. Chapter 2 sheds light on how these toolsets can be utilized for designing natural enzyme mimetic bioinorganic catalysts with a specific focus on redox active enzymes. Subsequently, in Chapter 3, the authors thoroughly discuss the guiding principles for tailoring bioinspired scaffolds that promote hydrogel formation through the self-assembly of peptides/peptide-based amphiphiles. They present a conceptual demonstration of the different approaches that can be considered for the tailoring of task-specific designer hydrogels for diverse therapeutic applications. Alongside, such scaffolds are now being widely used in applications related to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine which is the topic covered in Chapter 4. Here the authors present strategies for employing different moieties to build human-relevant disease models for a few highly fatal non-communicable diseases like cardiomyopathy, cancer, neuropathy and others. Further progressing with such biomaterials, in Chapter-5 the authors discuss another class of biopolymer namely Bacterial cellulose (BC) which finds widespread applications in healthcare and other industries. Here they have summarized the additives and techniques used to modify BC to form nanocomposites for applications in different industrial sectors.

Moving further from simple to more complex systems, in Chapter 6, the authors present the architecture of the cell membranes, drawing attention to how nature uses its self-designed nano-composite materials to enable execution of desired reactions under given environmental conditions. From the complex cellular membrane system, an even more complicated system is discussed in Chapter 7, wherein the authors have presented strategies to use whole cellular microorganisms for designing novel drug delivery systems. It is expected that the microbe-based drug delivery systems would possess reduced toxicities or side effects and can surely serve as a futuristic advanced drug carrier to improve patients’ health.

In summary, this book focuses on bringing together diversified materials with versatile applications, derived from different sources, commencing from plant derivatives to microorganisms in partial or whole as synthons, under one roof such that readers from various disciplines end up having reasonable content.