**1. Introduction**

Biomaterials are defined as materials that are used in therapeutic or diagnostic procedure by interactions with components of living systems [1]. Over the years, synthetic polymers, ceramics, and metals were preferred for these types of applications due to their reproducibility and better performance. However, the growing concern on environment and health side‐ effects have promoted researches to look for naturally derived polymers. Biomaterials are designed to be inert and not to interact in biological systems and not to cause any harmful changes to the body. Polysaccharides are natural polymers found in plant and organism. The abundance of polysaccharide as a renewable resource promised its sustainability and economic value for biomaterials. Their production cost is less than any synthetic polymers and is easily processable.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Polysaccharides are polymeric carbohydrate molecules consisting of long chains of monosac‐ charide units bound by glycosidic linkages. The fact that these polymers are extracted from natural resources has led to the impression of good biocompatibility and biodegradability. Chemically, nearly all materials from plants are carbohydrate in nature and composed of repeating unit of monosaccharides. Thus, they are nontoxic. Its biocompatible nature is also attributed to the structural similarity of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), which is a vital compo‐ nent of extracellular matrix in tissue. There is an emerging interest in reducing the amount of undisposable plastic waste that often leads to serious environmental problem. Polysaccharides are potential alternative for replacing conventional petroleum‐based plastics which are able to biodegrade naturally in soil. Polysaccharides are famous for their used in the food and dairy industries. However, its unique structure and versatile modification can be explored for other important fields.

Polysaccharide can be categorized into structural and storage polysaccharides. Examples of structural polysaccharides are cellulose in plant and chitin in the shells of crustacean, while storage polysaccharides include starch and glycogen. Polysaccharides are present in most living organisms. In fact, polysaccharides comprise about 70% of the dry weight of the total biomass [2]. Although polysaccharide is advantageous as biomaterials as they are more ecofriendly than petro‐polymers, there are still critical drawbacks that need special attention to make it an ideal choice. Polysaccharide exhibits poorer mechanical properties than the conventional plastics. Some polysaccharides also have strong hydrophilic behavior that may cause early rupture. Thus, polysaccharide composites have been extensively studied in regard to counter this problem and obtain additional properties for specific application.
