Renewable Polysaccharides Micro/Nanostructures for Food and Cosmetic Applications

Abstract

The worldwide diffusion of nanotechnologies into products nowadays has completely revolutionized human life, providing novel comfort and benefits. Their inclusion in food and cosmetic has a heavy impact over the market, allowing the development of higher value products with enhanced properties. Natural origin polymers and in particular polysaccharides represent a versatile platform of materials for the development of micro/nanostructured additives for food and cosmetic products due to their chemical versatility, biocompatibility, and abundance. Here, we review the current applications of polysaccharides-based micro/nanostructures, taking into consideration the precursors’ production, isolation, and extraction methods and highlighting the advantages, possible drawbacks, and market diffusion.

Valorisation of crustacean and bivalve processing side streams for industrial fast time-to-market products: A review from the European Union regulation perspective

“…In cosmetics, chitosan and its derivatives have been used to manufacture skin, hair, and oral care products (Dutta et al, 2004;Morganti et al, 2011;Massironi et al, 2020). In recent years, chitin and chitosan applications in eco-friendly processes have been highlighted, along with chitosan's advantages in the production of cosmetics (Casadidio et al, 2019).…”

Microbial polysaccharides: An emerging family of natural biomaterials for cancer therapy and diagnostics

“…They could be applied with bio-macromolecules, such as proteins, petides, lipid, and carbohyrades to prepare as conjugates or complexes and they can easily form gel. These characteristics make MPs as exceptional biomaterials for smart drug delivery purposes [117,118]. Various functional groups of MPs, such as OH, -NH2, and -COOH can be altered by adding hydrophobic groups to obtain amphiphilic polysaccharides that could be selfassembled in the nano form in aqueous media.…”

High-performance delignification of invasive tree species wood with ionic liquid and deep eutectic solvent for the production of cellulose-based polyelectrolytes

“…Polyelectrolytes have potential uses in several elds including for wastewater treatment, pharmaceutics or cosmetics. [24][25][26] In particular, because of environmental concerns, bio-based polyelectrolytes arouse an additional interest in comparison with the synthetic ones.…”