Chitosan-Based Drug and Bioactive Delivery Systems: Application of Chitosan Microcapsules to Enhance Absorption and Bioavailability of Bioactive Components

Abstract

There is great interest in the development of multifunctional microcapsules due to their widespread potential applications, which have been further enhanced in recent years with the rapid development of nanotechnology. Microencapsulation involves embedding active substances in stable environments, mainly to protect core materials from environmental influence and denaturation, and achieve slow release and improvement of the stability and bioavailability of encapsulated bioactive components. Among the numerous wall materials to produce microcapsules, chitosan, a natural biomaterial, is one of the most promising candidates due to its various merits, such as natural, nontoxic, biocompatible, and biodegradable. In recent years, chitosan as a carrier material has found wide applications in drug and bioactive delivery systems. Compared with other types of delivery systems, chitosan microcapsules exhibit unique advantages, such as slow and controlled compound release. The applications of chitosan-based microcapsules can be divided mainly into biomedical and food science. Chitosan-based microcapsules have a wide range of biomedical applications, such as drug delivery, gene delivery, wound dressing, infectious disease prevention, and bioimaging. Moreover, chitosan-based microcapsules designed for biomedical applications tend to be intelligent and multifunctional, especially for synergistic therapy. Regarding food science applications, chitosan-based microcapsules can be used for food storage and food preservation and to enhance the absorption and bioavailability of bioactive components. However, current chitosan-based microcapsules are limited due to high production cost, difficulty in scale-up, and lack of generality. Researchers still need to explore and develop economical and versatile design strategies to promote the industrial production of chitosan-based microcapsules. This chapter summarizes the latest design strategies and considerations for the use of chitosan microcapsules in biomedical and food science applications. Furthermore, safety and future challenges associated with chitosan microcapsules are also discussed. By analyzing the application of different chitosan-based microcapsules, the design highlights and key considerations are summarized and expected to provide researchers with new ideas.