ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the chemistry, design, fabrication, and application of bio-degradable hydrogels for drug delivery and tissue engineering. It describes the various structural classes of degradable hydrogels that exist. The degradation behavior of a biodegradable hydrogel depends significantly on its method of fabrication. The simplest form of the step-growth mechanism related to biodegradable hydrogel fabrication is the straightforward cross-linking of highly multifunctional natural polymers using small, bifunctional cross-linking agents. The chapter focuses on the fabrication and characterization of bulk-degrading, covalently cross-linked hydrogels. It reviews degradable hydrogel chemistries with proven or potential applications in tissue engineering and drug delivery. The chapter highlights efforts to develop hybrid hydrogel systems that display the most advantageous properties derived from both natural and synthetic materials. It also describes the chemistries as well as applications that comprise the most common degradable hydrogels.
