Research Progress of Chitin and Chitosan Derivatives
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2024 | Viewed by 1896
Special Issue Editor
Interests: chitosan derivatives; chitosan conjugates; antimicrobials; drug delivery; nanoparticles; mathematical modeling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Chitin and chitosan are unique polysaccharides with a wide range of applications. These include water treatment, agriculture, bioelectronics and biosensors, the food sector, and the health and pharmaceutical sector. They are used for purposes such as removing heavy metals and other pollutants, improving plant growth and seed protection, wound treatment, bone, and tissue regeneration, fat binding, cholesterol-lowering, nanoparticle, and drug delivery as well as antimicrobial action.
While these natural biopolymers show much promise, their structural variation is limited to variations in the degree of acetylation and acetylation pattern, and the molecular weight and weight distribution. However, chemical modification can be employed to make derivatives with enhanced physical and biological properties. For example, chemical modification can improve water solubility and increase antimicrobial activity, while linking molecular entities to the polymer backbones can result in conjugates with properties such as fluorescence and receptor targeting that natural polysaccharides lack. Additionally, chemical crosslinking can be used to create new materials, nanoparticles, gels, and coatings based on chitin and chitosan.
Impressive progress has been made in the field of chitin and chitosan in recent decades, and this Special Issue aims to highlight this progress. However, the reproducibility of some previously published work has been negatively affected by insufficient characterization of reported derivatives, where information about the degree of substitution, N vs. O substitution, degree of acetylation, and the molecular weight is often lacking. Therefore, authors submitting a manuscript to be included in this issue will be required to report the characteristics of the starting material and, whenever possible, provide NMR spectra with the correct assignment of all peaks and evaluation of the degree of substitution. It is also preferable if authors can provide information about molecular weight based on gel permeation chromatography or other methods.
Dr. Már Másson
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- chemical synthesis
- process development
- structure–activity–relationship
- structure–property–relationship
- alkylation
- acylation
- crosslinking
- chitin and chitosan derivatives
- chitin and chitosan conjugates
