Chitin, Characteristic, Sources, and Biomedical Application

Abstract

: Chitin stands at second, after cellulose, as the most abundant polysaccharide in the world. Chitin is found naturally in marine environments as it is a crucial structural component of various marine organisms.Different amounts of waste chitin and chitosan can be discovered in the environment. Chitinase producing microbes help to hydrolyze chitin waste to play an essential function for the removal of chitin pollution in the Marine Atmosphere. Chitin can be converted by using chemical and biological methods into prominent derivate chitosan. Numerous bacteria naturally have chitin degrading ability. Chitin shows promise in terms of biocompatibility, low toxicity, complete biodegradability, nontoxicity, and film-forming capability. The application of these polymers in the different sectors of biomedical, food, agriculture, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals could be lucrative. Also, the most recent achievement in nanotechnology is based on chitin and chitosan-based materials. In this review, we examine chitin in terms of its natural sources and different extraction methods, chitinase producing microbes and chitin, chitosan together with its derivatives for use in biomedical and agricultural applications.

Recent Advances in Chitosan and its Derivatives in Cancer Treatment

“…The mole fraction of the N-acetylated repeating units is regarded as the degree of acetylation (DA), on the contrary, the percentage of the repeating units of β-1,4-D-glucosamine in the polysaccharides is defined as the degree of deacetylation (DD). Although there are no universal agreement on the cut-off values for DD between chitin and chitosan, the DD values of most commercial chitosan are between 70 and 90% ( Younes and Rinaudo, 2015 ; Shahbaz, 2020 ; Kou et al, 2021 ).…”

Recent Progress of Chitosan Nanoparticles for the Development of Superior Delivery of Vaccines

“…A point that warrants future investigation might be exploiting the clinical efficacy of chitosan nanoparticles for the relevant treatment [26,27]. Some chitosan with an average molecular weight of less than 10,000 Da might be simply absorbed through the intestine and might be mainly excreted from the kidney [28], which are useful biological properties in various fields including cosmetics, nutrition, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and/or medicine [29,30]. The chitosan with a molecular weight of about 5000 Da could be the most active polymer supporting junction barriers through the activation of adenosine 3 ′ , 5 ′ -cyclic monophosphate (AMP)activated protein kinase (AMPK) [31], which might be mediated by calcium sensor mediated calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum of epithelial cells in the intestine [31].…”

Chitosan and Its Derivative-Based Nanoparticles in Gastrointestinal Cancers: Molecular Mechanisms of Action and Promising Anticancer Strategies

“…Te degree of acetylation (DA) is determined by the mole fraction of N-acetylated repeating units. In contrast, the degree of deacetylation (DD) is defned as the percentage of β-1,4-D-glucosamine repeating units in the polysaccharides [12,45,46]. CS may be [47].…”