**4. Conclusions**

TE represents an alternative approach to conventional surgical techniques used to treat damaged, injured or diseased tissues or organs. This approach is based on the use of tissue-mimicking and biodegradable constructs, based on the so-called 'scaffolds', able to restore, maintain or improve tissue functions. The physicochemical properties of the final scaffold play a key role in the process of new tissue formation. The selection of the proper biomaterial formulation is therefore essential. Recently, renewable biomaterials derived from industrial by-products are finding increasing application in TE as an alternative to petroleum-derived and unrecyclable polymers. In this regard, pectin, a polysaccharide commercially derived from citrus peel and apple pomace (both by-products of the food processing industry), is gaining attention in TE due to its biocompatibility, biodegradability and noncytotoxicity. Diverse pectin-based formulations have been developed and employed for the fabrication of functional scaffolds for TE applications.

This chapter presented the most representative applications of pectin-based formulations for the fabrication of scaffolds for TE applications. In particular, by properly processing these formulations through specific fabrication techniques is possible to produce pectin-based scaffolds with different features: from 2D nonporous films (obtained by solvent casting) to 3D scaffolds with patient-specific shape (obtained by extrusion-based bioprinting). Although pectin shows diverse advantageous properties as biomaterial, its application in clinical practice is still under investigation. The increasing number of studies on the preparation of biocompatible pectin-based formulations may strongly boost the employment of this polysaccharide in the fabrication of sustainable scaffolds for future TE applications.
