Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
5
Chitosan as an Advanced Healthcare Material
M.A. Jardine
*
and S. Sayed
Department of Chemistry, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract
Chitin and chitosan are renewable biopolymers with inherently favourable proper-
ties allowing diverse chemical modii cation that generates novel materials ideal for
biomedical applications. Chitin itself has very poor aqueous solubility and hence
found limited utility. For this reason the use of chitosan, in particular, modii ed
chitosan, has increased exponentially in biomedical applications in recent years.
h e review of chitosan as a health care material includes wound healing or tissue
regeneration, drug delivery and antimicrobial studies. Specialist applications are
vast and due to the shortened publication process, biomedical applications of chi-
tosan may warrant more frequent reviews.
In this review, highlights of recent research on the synthesis and analysis
of chitin and chitosan based nanomaterials and nanoi bres will be covered. A
detailed review of the synthetic transformation of chitosan that further added
value by enabling diverse application has been discussed. h e value of co-
polymerization and grat ing of biodegradable synthetic polymers with chitosan
in order to improve stability and control of the functional biomaterial has been a
major driver in the biotechnological innovation.
Keywords:
Chitosan, biomedical, polymers, nano, wound healing, drug delivery,
antimicrobial
5.1 Introduction
Chitosan is a linear semi-crystalline polysaccharide which has recently
been receiving signii cant scientii c interest, owing to its unique properties
including its biocompatibility, chemical versatility, biodegradability and
