Abstract: BACKGROUND: Polycationic chitosan drug carriers have shown good prospects in improving the effectiveness, utilization and security of existing drug delivery methods.
OBJECTIVE: To review the research progress of chitosan-based nano drug carriers in recent years.
METHODS: Computer was utilized to retrieve recently published articles in PubMed, CNKI and Elsevier Science Direct databases with key words “chitosan, nano, drug delivery, carrier” in Chinese and English. The time of publication was limited from 1994 to October 2020. The articles were primarily screened by reading and analyzing to exclude duplicate and low-relevance articles, and finally 54 articles were selected for result analysis.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: At present, the research of chitosan as a drug delivery carrier has made significant progress. Both in vitro cell experiments and animal experiments have confirmed that it has a good drug encapsulation rate and can effectively release drugs, with the help of chitosan’s good bioadhesive properties, it can achieve drug delivery across the barrier (such as the blood-brain barrier), and achieve targeted drug delivery to a certain extent. According to different needs, the chitosan-based composites are different in molecular weight, shape, particle size distribution, encapsulation efficiency and drug loading. Even if it coated with the same drug, due to different manufacturing process or operation, there may also be differences in drug encapsulation rate, drug loading and release rate. Therefore, most of these carriers cannot be mass-produced at present. There is still a lot of work to be done for the chitosan-based nanomedicine carrier in a wide range of clinical applications, but in future research, its excellent biomedical properties may further expand its application potential.

Key words: material, chitosan, nano, drug carrier, drug delivery, application, biocompatibility, preparation, cross-linking, review