ABSTRACT
Natural polymers or biopolymers are always the preferred class of polymers due to their easy availability, eco-friendly nature, biocompatibility, economic as well as their easy modification using certain chemical reagents. Gelatin is a naturally occurring biodegradable and multifunctional biopolymer. Gelatin is a mixture of proteins and peptides obtained by partial hydrolysis of collagen which is extracted from bones and skin trimmings of certain animals. Gelatin is rich in proline, hydroxyproline, and glycine in its chain. Its most common use is in the food industry as a thickening agent and as an emulsifier. Pharmaceutically it finds its application in the hard and soft gelatin capsules. Due to its swelling property, gelatin has found its use in drug delivery by making a hydrogel. Also, it can easily form a film and can be used in the microencapsulation and nanoparticles formation. Thiolated, pegylated, antibody anchored, peptide conjugated and cationized gelatin nanoparticles have been used in various aspects of drug delivery that include anticancer, ocular, and pulmonary delivery, protein, enzyme, and gene delivery. Moreover, polymeric, and lipidic complex nanoparticles with gelatin have also been prepared. Gelatin has also been explored in various tissue engineering scaffolds, films, or wounds healing dressings. The proposed chapter will focus on various strategies for gelatin that have been exploited in both the pharmaceutical as well as bioengineering field.
