Rodrigues Susana, Dionísio Marita, López Carmen Remuñán, Grenha Ana
Centre for Molecular and Structural Biomedicine (CBME), Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering (IBB), Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, Faro 8005-139, Portugal.
Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Santiago de Compostela, Campus Vida, Santiago de Compostela 15782, Spain.
J Funct Biomater. 2012 Sep 17;3(3):615-41. doi: 10.3390/jfb3030615.
Chitosan is one of the most used polysaccharides in the design of drug delivery strategies for administration of either biomacromolecules or low molecular weight drugs. For these purposes, it is frequently used as matrix forming material in both nano and micron-sized particles. In addition to its interesting physicochemical and biopharmaceutical properties, which include high mucoadhesion and a great capacity to produce drug delivery systems, ensuring the biocompatibility of the drug delivery vehicles is a highly relevant issue. Nevertheless, this subject is not addressed as frequently as desired and even though the application of chitosan carriers has been widely explored, the demonstration of systems biocompatibility is still in its infancy. In this review, addressing the biocompatibility of chitosan carriers with application in drug delivery is discussed and the methods used in vitro and in vivo, exploring the effect of different variables, are described. We further provide a discussion on the pros and cons of used methodologies, as well as on the difficulties arising from the absence of standardization of procedures.
壳聚糖是用于设计生物大分子或低分子量药物给药策略的最常用多糖之一。出于这些目的，它经常被用作纳米和微米级颗粒的基质形成材料。除了其有趣的物理化学和生物制药特性，包括高粘膜粘附性和产生药物递送系统的强大能力外，确保药物递送载体的生物相容性也是一个高度相关的问题。然而，这个问题并没有得到应有的频繁关注，尽管壳聚糖载体的应用已经得到了广泛探索，但系统生物相容性的证明仍处于起步阶段。在这篇综述中，讨论了壳聚糖载体在药物递送中的生物相容性，并描述了在体外和体内使用的方法，探讨了不同变量的影响。我们还进一步讨论了所用方法的优缺点，以及由于程序缺乏标准化而产生的困难。
