Chitosan based injectable hydrogels for smart drug delivery applications

Abstract

Hydrogels have a number of characteristics that make them an ideal candidate for biomedical applications. Chitosan is a well-known natural polymer, and it is favoured due to its good biocompatibility, low toxicity, and biodegradability characteristics. Though chitosan is an ideal drug-delivery polymer, however due to its poor solubility and to increase the mechanical strength, stimuli-responsive injectable hydrogels are prepared. Different cross-linking mechanisms are followed for the preparation of injectable hydrogels. Among them, the most common ones are physical and chemical cross-linking methods. Chitosan based injectable hydrogels can be used for the delivery of genes, proteins, antigens and drugs, and have been effectively applied in experimental therapy of several diseases including Parkinson's Disease, cancer and in different forms of degeneration.