Chitosan for biomedical applications

Chitosan, a copolymer of glucosamine and N-acetyl glucosamine, is a polycationic, biocompatible and biodegradable polymer. In addition, chitosan has different functional groups that can be modified with a wide array of ligands. Because of its unique physicochemical properties, chitosan has great potential in a range of biomedical applications, including tissue engineering, non-viral gene delivery and enzyme immobilization. In our work, the primary amine groups of chitosan were utilized for chitosan modification through biotinylation using N-hydroxysuccinimide chemistry. This was followed by the addition of avidin which strongly binds to biotin. Biotinylated ligands such as polyethylene glycol (PEG) and RGD peptide sequence, or biotinylated enzymes such as trypsin, were then added to modify the surface properties of the chitosan for a variety of purposes. Modified chitosans were formulated into nano-sized particles or cast into films. Different factors affecting fabrication of chitosan particles, such as the pH of the preparation, the inclusion of polyanions, the charge ratios and the degree of deacetylation and the molecular weight of chitosan were studied. Similarly, parameters affecting the fabrication of chitosan films, such as cross-linking, were investigated for potential applications in tissue engineering and enzyme immobilization. It was found that the inclusion of dextran sulfate resulted in optimum interaction between chitosan and DNA, as shown by the high stability of these nanoparticles and their high in vitro transfection efficiencies in HEK293 cells. When applying these formulations as DNA vaccines in vivo, chitosan nanoparticles loaded with the ovalbumin antigen and the plasmid DNA encoding the same antigen resulted in the highest antibody response in C57BL/6 mice. Furthermore, engineering of the surface of chitosan nanoparticles was done by utilizing the avidin-biotin interaction for attaching PEG and RGD. The modified