Abstract

Chitosan is a kind of natural material with many unique physicochemical and biological properties related to antibacterial, antioxidant, and chelating. In recent years, chitosan-based nano gels (CS-NG) have been widely used in the field of cancer nanomedicine due to their excellent characteristics including biodegradability, biocompatibility, flexibility, large surface area, controllability, high loading capacity, and especially it can be engineered to become stimuli-responsive to tumor environments. In this review, we summarized the main synthesis approaches of CS-NGs including radical polymerization, self-assembly, microemulsion, and ionic gelation methods. These novel CS-NGs are applied in cancer nanomedicine serving as drug delivery, gene delivery, and bioimaging. Besides, we proposed our perspectives regarding the clinical development of CS-NGs cancer nanomedicine applications.

Keywords: Chitosan-based nanogel, chitosan, nanogel, cancer nanomedicine.