Fourth EUCHIS Chitin and Chitosans Webinars: Chitosan Bionanotechnology

This month’s Chitin & Chitosans Webinar of the European Chitin Society was given by Prof. Francisco Goycoolea from Leeds University in UK and his former PhD candidate Celina Vila. We feel that this combination of a senior and a junior researcher speaking about related subjects is rather appreciated as it allows the auditorium to get deeply involved with the subject. Francisco talked about part of his previous work while he was still with us in Münster, but mostly reported on new developments from his lab in Leeds where he is meanwhile firmly and excellently established. His current interest is in developing encapsulation strategies for bioactives using chitosans and how these can be used to protect and specifically target their precious cargo to the target cells and tissues. In his outlook, he presented the hope that such chitosan-based nanoformulations can be used for the pulmonary delivery of mRNA vaccines or drugs, e.g. against Corona viruses. Celina took up this lead and reported on her successful strategies to use chitosan nanoparticles for the delivery of quorum quenching antibacterials. A particular problem lies in the instability of conventional chitosan nanoparticles in biological media, a problem she solved by stabilizing the particles via genipin-mediated, covalent crosslinking. This is not a new approach, but Celina varied it by swapping the sequence of steps: instead of crosslinking chitosan-TPP nanoparticles with genipin, she produced particles by ionic gelation of a pre-crosslinked chitosan-genipin complex using TPP. She found that both methods lead to stable nanoparticles, but only the new process maintains the quorum quenching ability of chitosan. We heard two excellent presentations and we are convinced the audience also enjoyed them. But we are thinking about how to stimulate a livelier discussion after the talks. We believe it could be an excellent opportunity for PhD students and post-doctoral researchers pursuing chitosan-related projects to network amongst each other and with experienced experts – but we will need to find a way to make this happen.