Carbohydrate Polymer Technologies and Applications (Jun 2024)
Advances in the use of chitosan and chlorotoxin- functionalized chitosan polymers in drug delivery and detection of glioma – A review
Abstract
The focus of this review is on chitosan and the functionalization of chitosan nanoparticles using chlorotoxin as a targeting agent in drug delivery and treatment of glioma. Chitosan has been characterized as the most commonly used polymer for brain targeting with the highest bioadhesive and biocompatible properties. Chitosan is a long chain amino-polysaccharide polymer obtained by alkaline deacetylation of chitin polysaccharide, a natural component of crab shells. It was shown to have many beneficial properties such as antifungal, antibacterial, tissue repair or neuroprotective. The advantage of using chitosan-drug based delivery is that it is biodegradable, breaking down to amino acids, and is readily absorbed and safe to use. In addition, chitosan has mucoadhesive properties and affinity for MUC1 (CD227). This property of chitosan was evaluated by us previously in a chitosan based-drug delivery system to tumor cells. Chitosan has been evaluated as a vehicle for various drug delivery systems including those for glioma and glioblastoma cells.Glioma is a highly aggressive and invasive brain tumor with low patient's survival and currently no effective therapies beside the standard surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Chlorotoxin is a 36 amino acids peptide and originally purified from venom of scorpion Leiurus quinquestriatus. It can be synthetically manufactured and was first shown to have an affinity for neuroectodermal tumor cells and later also for several other types of tumors. It has been shown to target tumor cells such as glioma in vitro and in vivo as well as in clinical studies. Conjugated to 131-I and administered intravenously its tumor targeting properties were evaluated in clinical trials treating glioblastoma. Recently, chlorotoxin has been applied in models of tumor detection and drug delivery systems including polymeric nanoparticles with chitosan to functionalize their delivery specifically to glioma.
