Advances in Chitosan-Based Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery

Abstract

Nanoparticles (NPs) have an outstanding position in pharmaceutical, biological, and medical disciplines. Polymeric NPs based on chitosan (CS) can act as excellent drug carriers because of some intrinsic beneficial properties including biocompatibility, biodegradability, non-toxicity, bioactivity, easy preparation, and targeting specificity. Drug transport and release from CS-based particulate systems depend on the extent of cross-linking, morphology, size, and density of the particulate system, as well as physicochemical properties of the drug. All these aspects have to be considered when developing new CS-based NPs as potential drug delivery systems. This comprehensive review is summarizing and discussing recent advances in CS-based NPs being developed and examined for drug delivery. From this point of view, an enhancement of CS properties by its modification is presented. An enhancement in drug delivery by CS NPs is discussed in detail focusing on (i) a brief summarization of basic characteristics of CS NPs, (ii) a categorization of preparation procedures used for CS NPs involving also recent improvements in production schemes of conventional as well as novel CS NPs, (iii) a categorization and evaluation of CS-based-nanocomposites involving their production schemes with organic polymers and inorganic material, and (iv) very recent implementations of CS NPs and nanocomposites in drug delivery.

Recent Advancement in Chitosan-Based Nanoparticles for Improved Oral Bioavailability and Bioactivity of Phytochemicals: Challenges and Perspectives

“…Moreover, CS can open the TJs between epithelial cells and inhibit the P-glycoprotein (P-gp) efflux transporter of epithelial cells, thus significantly facilitating the encapsulated molecules by the paracellular transport mechanism [69,70]. [71].…”

“…The PS of CS-NPs is directly dependent on the CS concentration in the formulation. Moreover, CS-NPs with high-molecular weight CS show a significantly higher PS compared to CS-NPs prepared with low-molecular weight CS [71]. The absorption of NPs by epithelial cells or M cells after oral administration greatly depends on the PS of NPs, which can affect the oral absorption efficiency as well as the speed of absorption.…”

Polymer-Based Nanosystems—A Versatile Delivery Approach

“…The active functional groups from the structure of chitosan can undergo reactions such as hydroxylation, carboxylation, alkylation, acylation, and esterification that help introduce pendant groups, destroy the crystal structure, and consequently enhance the solubility of the resulted material. This possibility of facile modification expands the chitosan application range and dosage form [23,66,67].…”

Manufacturing and Assessing the New Orally Disintegrating Tablets, Containing Nimodipine-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin and Nimodipine-methyl-β-cyclodextrin Inclusion Complexes

“…In the last decade, great efforts have been focused on increasing the bioavailability and solubility of poorly soluble drugs. Generally, the developed techniques tried to enhance the drug dissolution rate by introducing the drug into a solid dispersion [ 1 , 2 , 3 ].…”