Publications in Chitosan Research in 2008

The systematic study on chitosan and its applications also significantly gains in importance in 2008. The number of articles mentioning chitosan in their title and published in biomedical journals rise by 46% compared to the number of 2007 publications. Exploratory focus of the 692 articles were mainly in the areas biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Chitosan increasingly is considered as a precious raw material. Chitosan is a biocompatible material, a fact that even augment its meaning for medical uses in human bodies. Some fields of application are:

• Tissue Engineering
• Targeted delivery of drugs, partly as nanoparticles (drug delivery and drug targeting)
• Production of wound dressings with healing and hemostatic properties, that are used e.g. for high degree burnings or strongly bleeding wounds.

Particularly Asian researchers dedicate their studies to chitosan and its derivatives. Front-runners are Chinese scientists with 196 publications. They are followed by researchers from the United States (64), South Corea (52), Taiwan (36), India (36), Italy (28), Japan (25), Canada (22), Brazil (21) and Portugal (19). Germany is in place 16 with its nine publications. Considering Europe as one region, European scientists are in second place with about 120 publications.

Chitosan Publications 2008The group Biomaterials, Biodegradables and Biometics of Prof. Dr. Rui Luis Reis in Portugal published, according to GoPubMed, five articles. That way he reached the highest number of publications with research in tissue engineering with the use of chitosan. Four papers each were published by the Chinese scientist Prof. Dr. Ruo Yuan, the decane of the school of chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the Southwest University Chingqing and the Thai researcher Dr. Tanasait Nghawirunpat at theThai Silpakorn University in Bangkok.

Even if C. Rouget discovered chitosan 150 years ago, the since 1993 rising rate of chitosan publications shows clearly the high potential of chitosan. Heppe Medical Chitosan is curious about new publications and we will report about them for you.