Chitin and Chitosan as Multipurpose Natural Polymers for Groundwater Arsenic Removal and As2O3 Delivery in Tumor Therapy

Abstract

Chitin and chitosan are natural polysaccharide polymers. These polymers have been used in several agricultural, food protection and nutraceutical applications. Moreover, chitin and chitosan have been also used in biomedical and biotechnological applications as drug delivery systems or in pharmaceutical formulations. So far, there are only few studies dealing with arsenic (As) removal from groundwater using chitin or chitosan and no evidence of the use of these natural polymers for arsenic trioxide (As2O3) delivery in tumor therapy. Here we suggest that chitin and/or chitosan might have the right properties to be employed as efficient polymers for such applications. Besides, nanotechnology offers suitable tools for the fabrication of novel nanostructured materials of natural origin. Since different nanostructured materials have already been employed successfully in various multidisciplinary fields, we expect that the integration of nanotechnology and natural polymer chemistry will further lead to innovative applications for environment and medicine.

Poriferan Chitin as a Versatile Template for Extreme Biomimetics

“…Analysis of the possible interactions between chitin and zirconia nanoparticles with Raman spectroscopy confirmed that formation of chitin-ZrO2 hybrid materials is due to hydrogen bond formation between chitin and ZrO2 [137,160]. These chitin-zirconia composites are increasingly attractive for various applications, such as the construction of advanced zirconia-based hydrogen peroxide biosensors [192], adsorbents of heavy metals [193,194] and materials for biomedical devices [195][196][197].…”

Removal of As(III) and As(V) from water by chitosan and chitosan derivatives: a review

“…As a result, the protonation of amine groups on chitosan with lower pH pzc values is more easier to adsorb, which leads to the continuous release of hydroxide ions to the aqueous medium (-NH 2 + H + ⇔ -NH 3 + ) (Kwok et al 2014). Amine protonation and zeta potential will increase with the decrease of the pH at the surface of the chitosan (Kwok et al 2009(Kwok et al , 2014Sacco and Masotti 2010;Gerentea et al 2010). In most cases, the lower pH that may be 5.5 and lowest can get better results.…”

“…It plays an important role in the performance. Because they have different density, porosity, specific surface area, and its surface charge in terms of the point of zero charge (Kwok et al 2009;Sacco and Masotti 2010;Hanh et al 2015;Gerentea et al 2010), thus it does deep effect on the sorption. Small particles can relatively cause the large specific surface area, and it will increase the sorption of the chitosan.…”

“…It is generally believed that electrostatic interactions, metal chelation, and ion pair formations are the three main mechanisms hypothesized to occur when a metal is adsorbed by chitosan (Sacco and Masotti 2010;Varma et al 2004;Chen et al 2008). The arsenite anion may preferentially form electrostatic interactions with protonated chitosan amino groups; -NH 2 is protonated to NH 3 + and it loads at the surface of chitosan; the O − is as the bridge between the metal and NH 3 + .…”

A Novelhybrid Bio-System for Wastewater Treatment Using Algerian Agricultural Wastes

“…Recently, research has focused on the study of chitinous products and their derivatives and, in particular, chitosan, which is the most economically attractive [5][6][7][8].…”