Polysaccharide-based Nanomaterials Research Articles

Polysaccharide-Based Nanomedicines Targeting Lung Cancer.

A primary illness that accounts for a significant portion of fatalities worldwide is cancer. Among the main malignancies, lung cancer is recognised as the most chronic kind of cancer around the globe. Radiation treatment, surgery, and chemotherapy are some medical procedures used in the traditional care of lung cancer. However, these methods lack selectivity and damage nearby healthy cells. Several polysaccharide-based nanomaterials have been created to transport chemotherapeutics to reduce harmful and adverse side effects and improve response during anti-tumour reactions. To address these drawbacks, a class of naturally occurring polymers called polysaccharides have special physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. They can interact with the immune system to induce a better immunological response. Furthermore, because of the flexibility of their structures, it is possible to create multifunctional nanocomposites with excellent stability and bioavailability for the delivery of medicines to tumour tissues. This study seeks to present new views on the use of polysaccharide-based chemotherapeutics and to highlight current developments in polysaccharide-based nanomedicines for lung cancer.

Design of chitosan nanocrystals decorated with amino acids and peptides

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) offer a great promise in designing new therapeutics due to their ability to interfere in bacterial growth by penetrating the cell wall. The overuse of antibiotics has resulted into antibiotic-resistant bacteria and AMPs could be an alternative to circumvent this resistance. Chitosan nanocrystals (ChsNCs) are rod-shaped polysaccharide-based nanomaterials, formed by deacetylation of seafood waste. They possess primary amino groups on the surface of the nanoparticles which can be as used a scaffold due to the built-in morphology and ease in functionalization. Here, we developed a new methodology to functionalize ChsNCs with amino acids and peptides by using fundamentals of solid phase peptide synthesis. The resulting functionalized rod-shaped nanomaterials were characterized using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), dynamic light scattering (DLS), zeta potential measurements and microscopy imaging. This synthetic strategy could be used in designing ChsNC-based nanomaterials to target specific cells by attaching bioactive peptides to the nanomaterial surface.

Facile Fabrication of Polysaccharide Nanocomposites Using Ionic Gelation Method

Polysaccharide-based nanomaterials with significant biocompatibility and physiochemical features have been widely analyzed in modern biomedical nanotechnology. Chitosan-coating is an advantageous procedure to provide several pharmacological characteristics of chitosan on the reinforcement. Here, we fabricated polysaccharide nanocomposites using the facile ionic gelation method and sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP) cross-linker. The polysaccharide nanocomposites comprised natural cellulose and chitosan as reinforcement and coating agents, respectively. From the image of the scanning electron microscope, the nanocomposites indicated almost spherical dimensions with sizes below 60 nm. Results from X-ray powder diffraction and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy showed multifunctional properties of the nanocomposites related to both cellulose and chitosan. Therefore, the ionic gelation method is potentially appropriate to synthesize the polysaccharide nanocomposites for medically-related applications.

Polysaccharide-Based Nanomaterials for Ocular Drug Delivery: A Perspective.

Ocular drug delivery is one of the most challenging issues in ophthalmology because of the complex physiological structure of the eye. Polysaccharide-based nanomaterials have been extensively investigated in recent years as ideal carriers for enhancing the bioavailability of drugs in the ocular system because of their biocompatibility and drug solubilization. From this perspective, we discuss the structural instability of polysaccharides and its impact on the synthesis process; examine the potential for developing bioactive polysaccharide-based ocular drug nanocarriers; propose four strategies for designing novel drug delivery nanomaterials; and suggest reviewing the behavior of nanomaterials in ocular tissues.

An update on polysaccharide-based nanomaterials for antimicrobial applications.

Scientific community has made a lot of efforts to combat the infectious diseases using antimicrobial agents, but these are associated with problems of development of multi-drug resistance and their adverse side effects. To tackle these challenges, nanocarrier-based drug delivery system using polysaccharides has received enormous attention in the past few years. These antimicrobial agents can become more efficacious when adsorbed, entrapped, or linked to polysaccharides. In addition, these nanocarrier-based systems provide an increase in the surface area of the drug and are able to achieve the targeted drug delivery as well as used for the synthesis of packaging materials with improved mechanical strength, barrier, and antimicrobial properties. This review focuses on potential therapeutic applications of nanocarrier-based drug delivery systems using polysaccharides for antimicrobial applications.

Marine polysaccharide-based nanomaterials as a novel source of nanobiotechnological applications

Research on marine polysaccharide-based nanomaterials is emerging in nanobiotechnological fields such as drug delivery, gene delivery, tissue engineering, cancer therapy, wound dressing, biosensors, and water treatment. Important properties of the marine polysaccharides include biocompatibility, biodegradability, nontoxicity, low cost, and abundance. Most of the marine polysaccharides are derived from natural sources such as fucoidan, alginates, carrageenan, agarose, porphyran, ulvan, mauran, chitin, chitosan, and chitooligosaccharide. Marine polysaccharides are very important biological macromolecules that widely exist in marine organisms. Marine polysaccharides exhibit a vast variety of structures and are still under-exploited and thus should be considered as a novel source of natural products for drug discovery. An enormous variety of polysaccharides can be extracted from marine organisms such as algae, crustaceans, and microorganisms. Marine polysaccharides have been shown to have a variety of biological and biomedical properties. Recently, research and development of marine polysaccharide-based nanomaterials have received considerable attention as one of the major resources for nanotechnological applications. This review highlights the recent research on marine polysaccharide-based nanomaterials for biotechnological and biomedical applications.

Recent strategies to develop polysaccharide-based nanomaterials for biomedical applications.

Polysaccharides are abundant in nature, renewable, nontoxic, and intrinsically biodegradable. They possess a high level of functional groups including hydroxyl, amino, and carboxylic acid groups. These functional groups can be utilized for further modification of polysaccharides with small molecules, polymers, and crosslinkers; the modified polysaccharides have been used as effective building blocks in fabricating novel biomaterials for various biomedical applications such as drug delivery carriers, cell-encapsulating biomaterials, and tissue engineering scaffolds. This review describes recent strategies to modify polysaccharides for the development of polysaccharide-based biomaterials; typically self-assembled micelles, crosslinked microgels/nanogels, three-dimensional hydrogels, and fibrous meshes. In addition, the outlook is briefly discussed on the important aspects for the current and future development of polysaccharide-based biomaterials, particularly tumor-targeting intracellular drug delivery nanocarriers.