Glycol Chitosan: A Water-Soluble Polymer for Cell Imaging and Drug Delivery

Abstract

Glycol chitosan (GC), a water-soluble chitosan derivative with hydrophilic ethylene glycol branches, has both hydrophobic segments for the encapsulation of various drugs and reactive functional groups for facile chemical modifications. Over the past two decades, a variety of molecules have been physically encapsulated within or chemically conjugated with GC and its derivatives to construct a wide range of functional biomaterials. This review summarizes the recent advances of GC-based materials in cell surface labeling, multimodal tumor imaging, and encapsulation and delivery of drugs (including chemotherapeutics, photosensitizers, nucleic acids, and antimicrobial agents) for combating cancers and microbial infections. Besides, different strategies for GC modifications are also highlighted with the aim to shed light on how to endow GC and its derivatives with desirable properties for therapeutic purposes. In addition, we discuss both the promises and challenges of the GC-derived biomaterials.

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“…However, this limitation might be overcome by using multicomponent material bioinks or by chemically modifying chitosan polymeric backbone with certain functional groups to improve its properties including solubility. [13,74] As favorable as natural polymer-based materials are for biomedical applications, they also encompass some disadvantages. Even though hydrogels derived from synthetic polymers may mitigate some of these shortcomings, they are also more likely to contain cytotoxic components, such as unreacted monomers, initiators, and crosslinkers, as well as generate toxic reaction byproducts, which means that this type of polymers must be carefully selected in order not to compromise biocompatibility.…”

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“…Chitosan derivatization with hydrophilic ethylene glycol (glycol chitosan) increases solubility in water at a neutral/acidic pH. In addition, the reactive functional groups of glycol chitosan facilitate chemical modifications and formation of different derivatives useful for targeting gene delivery [24]. In addition to the properties of chitosan derivatives, the efficient delivery of the cargo greatly depends on chitosan polyplex properties, such as pH, molecular weight, deacetylation degree and N/P ratio [7,9].…”