The virtuous potential of chitosan oligosaccharide for promising biomedical applications

Chitosan is one of the most versatile biopolymers available with established properties such as antimicrobial, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, mucoadhesive, and more. It has been in biomedical research for long, but still the bench-to-bedside translation is hampered because of viscosity and solubility issues. The only commercial application of chitosan has been in hemostatic dressings. Chitosan oligosaccharide (COS), on the other hand, is highly promising in a similar research area where chitosan’s limitations come into the way. COS is highly soluble in water, and its viscosity is very less than that of the parent chitosan. Although COS retains properties very similar to those of chitosan, there has been minuscule volume of research on this water-soluble chitosan. COS has been successfully used as a drug delivery vehicle in various research. COS has also shown to have osteogenic ability. It has been used as a coating on experimental orthopedic implants because of its antibacterial properties. As of now, COS is not a much-explored biopolymer, although it could be an important biopolymer for its capacity in biomedical research. This article reviews various properties and reports of COS relevant for biomedical applications.