Structure-property relationships in peroxide-assisted blends of poly(ε-caprolactone) and poly(3-hydroxybutyrate)

Advances in chitosan-based blends as potential drug delivery systems: A review

During the last decades, the ever-increasing incidence of diseases has led to high rates of mortality throughout the world. On the other hand, the inability and deficiencies of conventional approaches (such as chemotherapy) in the suppression of diseases remain challenging issues. As a result, there is a fundamental requirement to develop novel, biocompatible, bioavailable, and practical nanomaterials to prevent the incidence and mortality of diseases. Chitosan (CS) derivatives and their blends are outstandingly employed as promising drug delivery systems for disease therapy. These biopolymers are indicated more efficient performance against diseases compared with conventional modalities. The CS blends possess improved physicochemical properties, ease of preparation, high affordability, etc. characteristics compared with other biopolymers and even pure CS which result in efficient thermal, mechanical, biochemical, and biomedical features. Also, these blends can be administrated through different routes without a long-term treatment period. Due to the mentioned properties, numerous formulations of CS blends are developed for pharmaceutical sciences to treat diseases. This review article highlights the progressions in the development of CS-based blends as potential drug delivery systems against diseases.

Chitosan-based blends for biomedical applications

Polysaccharides are the most abundant naturally available carbohydrate polymers; composed of monosaccharide units covalently connected together. Chitosan is the most widely used polysaccharides because of its exceptional biocompatibility, mucoadhesion, and chemical versatility. However, it suffers from a few drawbacks, e.g. poor mechanical properties and antibacterial activity for biomedical applications. Blending chitosan with natural or synthetic polymers may not merely improve its physicochemical and mechanical properties, but may also improve its bioactivity-induced properties. This review paper summarizes progress in chitosan blends with biodegradable polymers and polysaccharides and their biomedical applications. Blends of chitosan with alginate, starch, cellulose, pectin and dextran and their applications were particularly addressed. The critical and challenging aspects as well as the future ahead of the use of chitosan-based blends were eventually enlightened.

Cellulose nanofibers reinforced biodegradable polyester blends: Ternary biocomposites with balanced mechanical properties

Blending two biodegradable aliphatic polyesters with complementary bulk properties is an easy way of tuning their final properties. In this work, the ductile poly(butylene succinate) was mixed with polylactide, and as expectable, the blends show improved toughness with sharply reduced strengths. The pristine cellulose nanofibers were then used as the reinforcement for the blends. It is found that most nanofibers are dispersed in the polylactide phase because polylactide has better affinity to nanofibers, and the lower viscosity level of polylactide also favors driving nanofibers into the continuous polylactide phase during melting mixing. In this case, the strength and rigidity losses resulted from the presence of soft poly(butylene succinate) phase are compensated to some extent. To further improve mechanical properties, a two-step approach (reactive processing of blends, followed by the incorporation with nanofibers) was developed. This work provides an interesting way of fabricating fully biodegradable composites with well-balanced mechanical performance.