Abstract
In recent decades, drug delivery systems (DDSs) based on nanotechnology have been attracting substantial interest in the pharmaceutical field, especially those developed based on natural polymers such as chitosan, cellulose, starch, collagen, gelatin, alginate and elastin. Nanomaterials based on chitosan (CS) or chitosan derivatives are broadly investigated as promising nanocarriers due to their biodegradability, good biocompatibility, non-toxicity, low immunogenicity, great versatility and beneficial biological effects. CS, either alone or as composites, are suitable substrates in the fabrication of different types of products like hydrogels, membranes, beads, porous foams, nanoparticles, in-situ gel, microparticles, sponges and nanofibers/scaffolds. Currently, the CS based nanocarriers are intensely studied as controlled and targeted drug release systems for different drugs (anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, anticancer etc.) as well as for proteins/peptides, growth factors, vaccines, small DNA (DNAs) and short interfering RNA (siRNA). This review targets the latest biomedical approaches for CS based nanocarriers such as nanoparticles (NPs) nanofibers (NFs), nanogels (NGs) and chitosan coated liposomes (LPs) and their potential applications for medical and pharmaceutical fields. The advantages and challenges of reviewed CS based nanocarriers for different routes of administration (oral, transmucosal, pulmonary and transdermal) with reference to classical formulations are also emphasized.
Highlights
Academic Editors: Hansoo Park and Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Grigore T
Zou et al [161] reported the successful encapsulation of the antibacterial peptide derived from king cobra, cathelicidin OH-CATH30 (OH-30) in a polyvinyl alcohol/chitosan (PVA/CS) NFs scaffold with carboxymethyl chitosan nanoparticles (CMCS-NPs), resulting nanofibrous mats with carboxymethyl chitosan cathelicidin nanoparticles (CMCS-OH-30NPs)
Nanotechnology has attracted considerable interest from scientists in biomedical and pharmaceutical applications and, with the advances in biopolymer science, a large number of multifunctional nano-materials based on CS were formulated as drug delivery systems (DDSs)
Summary
The development of polymeric drug delivery systems (DDSs) using the latest nanotechnology approaches had gained scientists’ attention in the pharmaceutical field, the most used polymers being those of natural origin such as chitosan, starch, cellulose, gelatin, elastin and alginate [1]. CS proved to have bacteriostatic, fungistatic, haemostatic hypobilirubinaemic, hypocholesterolemic [6], antiacid and antiulcer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antidiabetic and neuro-protective effects [7] Based on these special characteristics, CS is a promising biomaterial and has attracted increasing attention of researchers for developed CS-based materials for biomedical applications, especially as DDSs [5]. An important feature of CS is its mucoadhesive ability, which is explained by electrostatic interactions between the positively charged amino groups of polymer chain with the negatively charged mucin glycoproteins residues, rich in sialic and sulfonic acids [13].
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