Chitosan-Based Biocompatible Copolymers for Thermoresponsive Drug Delivery Systems: On the Development of a Standardization System

Chitosan is a natural polysaccharide that is considered to be biocompatible, biodegradable and non-toxic. The polymer has been used in drug delivery applications for its positive charge, which allows for adhesion with and recognition of biological tissues via non-covalent interactions. In recent tim...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lorenzo Marsili, Michele Dal Bo, Federico Berti, Giuseppe Toffoli
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: MDPI AG 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/d919573ab21048d98eb6ec0ab08448db
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Chitosan is a natural polysaccharide that is considered to be biocompatible, biodegradable and non-toxic. The polymer has been used in drug delivery applications for its positive charge, which allows for adhesion with and recognition of biological tissues via non-covalent interactions. In recent times, chitosan has been used for the preparation of graft copolymers with thermoresponsive polymers such as poly-<i>N</i>-vinylcaprolactam (PNVCL) and poly-<i>N</i>-isopropylamide (PNIPAM), allowing the combination of the biodegradability of the natural polymer with the ability to respond to changes in temperature. Due to the growing interest in the utilization of thermoresponsive polymers in the biological context, it is necessary to increase the knowledge of the key principles of thermoresponsivity in order to obtain comparable results between different studies or applications. In the present review, we provide an overview of the basic principles of thermoresponsivity, as well as a description of the main polysaccharides and thermoresponsive materials, with a special focus on chitosan and poly-<i>N</i>-Vinyl caprolactam (PNVCL) and their biomedical applications.