Chemically Modified Polysaccharides With Applications in Nanomedicine
Abstract
Natural polymers, especially polysaccharides, possess through their chemical structure the fundamental qualities that recommend them for use in biomedical purposes: biocompatibility, lack of toxicity, biodegradability, abundance, relatively low cost, and renewable nature.
The increasing demand for the development of diversified biomaterials and the appearance in recent decades of nanomedicine has imposed the need to modify the structure of these polymers to induce new properties and hence to widen the spectrum of applications, which leads to increased value.
The dominant presence of functional groups makes possible the development of typical organic reactions but also the synthesis of grafted or block copolymers. It becomes possible to obtain micro- and nanoparticulate materials with applications in nanomedicine for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of diseases, where the administration of classic drugs has not shown much effectiveness.
This chapter aims to review the possibilities of chemical modification of some representative polysaccharides which, by the properties mentioned, have found many applications in areas such as food, cosmetics, and especially in nanomedicine: alginates, carrageenan, chitosan, dextran, gellan, pullulan, and xanthan. The resulted derivatives by reaction of the functional groups of these polysaccharides, and compounds resulting from reactions of graft and block copolymerization are presented; the authors insist particularly on the products that have found applications in nanomedicine in recent years