Abstract
Glycol chitosan (GC) and its derivatives have been extensively investigated as safe and effective drug delivery carriers because of their unique physiochemical and biological properties. The reactive functional groups such as the amine and hydroxyl groups on the GC backbone allow for easy chemical modification with various chemical compounds (e.g., hydrophobic molecules, crosslinkers, and acid-sensitive and labile molecules), and the versatility in chemical modifications enables production of a wide range of GC-based drug carriers. This review summarizes the versatile chemical modification methods that can be used to design GC-based drug carriers and describes their recent applications in disease therapy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1662 |
| Journal | Molecules |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgments: This research was supported in part by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (grant number 2015R1A2A2A07027863), the High Value-added Food Technology Development Program, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA), Republic of Korea (316058-3, 315063-3), the Functional Districts of the Science Belt support program, Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea (2017K000017), and the Ewha Womans University Research Grant of 2015.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the authors.
Keywords
- Chemical derivatizations
- Disease therapy
- Drug carriers
- Glycol chitosan
- Nanoparticles