Chitosan Nanocomposites Applied to the Field of Regenerative Medicine. A Systematic Review.

Abstract

Chitosan is a biopolymer obtained from the chitin found in the exoskeleton of crustaceans, insects, arachnids and the cell wall of fungi. Recent research has confirmed the use of chitosan as a promising biomaterial due to its characteristics such as porous structure, the capacity of chemical modification, high affinity to macromolecules in vivo, among others. The aim of this systematic literature review was to evaluate the applications of chitosan as a biomaterial in regenerative medicine. A literature search was conducted between 2013-2018 in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Embase databases. In this review, the “ToxRTool” (Toxicological data Reliability Assessment Tool) was used to assess the inherent quality or reliability of selected studies at the methodological level . The results showed that the chitosan nanocomposites are being studied mainly using in vitro methodologies (92.59%), diverse coupling components, and in multiple applications. However, the lack of methodological information concerning the use of controls for the experiments make reproducibility difficult and constrain the subsequent development of in vivo studies. The ToxRTool was found useful to identify eight studies (29.6%) as “Reliable without Restrictions” and 19 studies (70.4%) as “Reliable with restrictions”, indicating that more carefully studies concerning the toxicity of chitosan nanocomposites are required. Chitosan is a versatile biomaterial, which has allowed its incorporation into a wide variety of components, improving its biological, mechanical and physical properties, thus obtaining nanocomposites that are increasingly useful and effective for nanomedicine use.