Chitosan‐based nanocomposites for medical applications

Abstract

Chitosan as a biobased polymer is gaining increasing attention due to its extraordinary physico-chemical characteristics and properties. While a primary use of chitosan has been in horticultural and agricultural applications for plant defense and to increase crop yield, recent research reports display various new utilizations in the field of advanced biomedical devices, targeted drug delivery, and as bioimaging sensors. Chitosan possesses multiple characteristics such as antimicrobial properties, stimuli-responsiveness, tunable mechanical strength, biocompatibility, biodegradability, and water-solubility. Further, chitosan can be processed into nanoparticles, nano-vehicles, nanocapsules, scaffolds, fiber meshes, and 3D printed scaffolds for a variety of applications. In recent times, nanoparticles incorporated in chitosan matrices have been identified to show superior biological activity, as cells tend to proliferate/differentiate faster when they interact with nanocomposites rather than bulk or micron size substrates/scaffolds. The present article intents to cover chitosan-based nanocomposites used for regenerative medicine, wound dressings, drug delivery, and biosensing applications.

Weak Polyelectrolytes as Nanoarchitectonic Design Tools for Functional Materials: A Review of Recent Achievements

“…A range of approaches yielding prominently biosourced single-polyelectrolyte gels have been proposed based on precipitation/coagulation through H-bonding, hydrophobic interactions, and crosslinking through reactions with either ionic or covalent crosslinkers [ 152 , 153 ]. Although this research will not be covered in this review, recently published works are highlighted for further reading on this topic [ 154 , 155 , 156 ]. In contrast, processing polyelectrolyte complexes formed from the spontaneous entropy-driven complexation of polyanions and polycations [ 34 ] into gels and membranes is a method that has only been developed recently [ 13 , 157 ].…”

The Use of Chitosan-Coated Nanovesicles in Repairing Alcohol-Induced Damage of Liver Cells in Mice

“…Moreover, chitosan has gained attention as biomedical material [13,14] due to its multifaceted activities, such as anti-inflammatory [15], antibacterial [16], antitumoral [17][18][19], immunostimulatory [20], anti-hyperglycemic and anti-hyperlipidemic [21,22], antiulcer [23] and antioxidant [24,25] activities. The literature data highlight that this polymer can be formulated into various dosage forms: solutions, gels, solid mixtures, sponges, prolongedrelease tablets, pastes and nanoparticles, for different applications [26].…”

The Bioanalytical and Biomedical Applications of Polymer Modified Substrates

“…Polymers, including synthetic polymers, semi-synthetic polymers and biopolymers, have been demonstrated as a valuable tool for tuning the physicochemical properties of a surface [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Polymer modified substrates have been extensively applied in various fields such as biomedicine, food safety, environment protection and microelectronics, because the polymers with high molecular weight provide multiple options for the immobilization of bioactive molecules with diverse functionalities and various labeling probes suitable for different detection principles [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. In the presence of properly selected reactive groups, including hydroxyl, carboxyl, aldehyde and amine on polymer chains, bioactive compounds can be easily immobilized on the polymer surfaces through covalent reactions and non-covalent interactions.…”