This paper reports recent advancements in chitosan‐based antimicrobial biomaterials that aim to address the issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Today, AMR is one of the most significant public health challenges the world is facing. To combat the overuse of antibiotics, a range of materials, including advanced nanosized polymers, have been explored as potential antimicrobial agents. In this direction, chitosan scores highly because of its unique combination of properties such as biodegradability, biocompatibility, bioactivity, non‐toxic, and, most importantly, its intrinsic antibacterial and antifungal activity. Herein, an overview of chitosan and its derivatives as potential alternatives to conventional antimicrobial therapeutics is reported. This review starts with understanding the AMR mechanism, which is critical for developing suitable materials for treating infectious diseases. Then, the inherent characteristics, modes of antimicrobial action, and factors that impact the antimicrobial effectiveness of chitosan and its derivatives are discussed. The authors further summarize various clinical trial results of chitosan‐based materials as antimicrobial agents. Finally, various antimicrobial applications of chitosan‐based materials are reported. In summary, this review offers new insights into the design of chitosan‐based sustainable materials for various antimicrobial applications.

Aiming to improve the treatment outcomes of current daily tuberculosis (TB) chemotherapy over several months, we investigated whether nanoencapsulation of existing drugs would allow decreasing the treatment frequency to weekly, thereby ultimately improving patient compliance. Nanoencapsulation of three first-line anti-TB drugs was achieved by a unique, scalable spray-drying technology forming free-flowing powders in the nanometer range with encapsulation efficiencies of 82, 75, and 62% respectively for rifampicin, pyrazinamide, and isoniazid. In a pre-clinical study on TB infected mice, we demonstrate that the encapsulated drugs, administered once weekly for nine weeks, showed comparable efficacy to daily treatment with free drugs over the same experimental period. Both treatment approaches had equivalent outcomes for resolution of inflammation associated with the infection of lungs and spleens. These results demonstrate how scalable technology could be used to manufacture nanoencapsulated drugs. The formulations may be used to reduce the oral dose frequency from daily to once weekly in order to treat uncomplicated TB.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are more than 2.3 million cases of breast cancer (BC) each year, with 80% of deaths occurring in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs). Chemotherapeutic agents are used in the treatment of BC to kill or slow the growth of cancer cells. While they can be effective in many cases, they also have potential side effects. These include long‐term effects such as possible damage to healthy organs, limited efficacy, and resistance development. Trastuzumab (Tmab) offers superior treatment options due to low toxicity and high specificity for a target antigen. However, Tmab treatment, despite being available for the last two decades, has remained challenging and expensive to manage, and inaccessible to people in underserved communities. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that such effective medication is within reach of those in need, regardless of social or economic class. Recent advances in nanomedicine have led to a growing number of studies that show promise in meeting these challenges through access to adequate anticancer drugs in LMICs. This review analyzes such reports while highlighting the progress of nanomedicine and anticancer drug systems and presents opportunities that have been overlooked over the years for LMICs.

The controlled delivery of proteins within calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) particles is currently widely investigated. The success of these carriers is driven by ionic interactions between the encapsulated proteins and the particles. This poses a great limitation on the successful loading of proteins that have no ionic affinity to CaCO₃. In this study, we explored the use of polysaccharide–protein interactions to strongly enhance the encapsulation of proteins in CaCO₃ microparticles. Previously, Vandevenne and colleagues inserted a human chitin binding domain (ChBD) that has intrinsic affinity for hyaluronic acid (HA) into a β-lactamase (BlaP). This generated chimeric protein, named BlaPChBD, was shown to be fully bifunctional. In this study we showed that this hybrid protein can associate with HA and be successfully loaded into vaterite CaCO₃ microparticles using supercritical CO₂ (ScCO₂) technology aided by the templating effect of HA on CaCO₃. The presence of ChBD inserted into BlaP increased the encapsulation of the protein by 6-fold when complexed with HA. Furthermore, thrombin cleavage sites were engineered on both sides of the inserted ChBD in the chimeric BlaP to achieve release of the protein from the microparticles by protease cleavage. Our results showed that thrombin cleavage increased the release of the protein from the microparticles within 36 hours from <20% to 87%. In conclusion, the presence of ChBD successfully improved the encapsulation yield of the protein while retaining up to 82% of its activity and efficient release of the protein from the microparticles was achieved by protease cleavage.

Betulinic acid from plants, biosynthesis, or chemical synthesis can be formulated into BA-nanocarriers, enhancing therapeutic efficacy against breast cancer by improving solubility, bioavailability, stability, delivery, and treatment outcomes.

Betulinic acid (BA) is a promising natural anti‐tumor agent renowned for its activity against various tumor cell types. Despite its favorable profile of low cytotoxicity to normal cells, BA's inherent hydrophobic nature and relatively short systematic half‐life impose hurdles for clinical application. This study introduces a strategy to surmount these obstacles by developing a drug delivery system employing poly(lactic‐co‐glycolic acid) (PLGA)‐encapsulated BA nanoparticles (PLGA‐BA NPs). Rigorous characterization techniques such as dynamic light scattering (DLS), x‐ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses are employed to confirm the integrity of the drug within the nanocarriers. The PLGA‐BA NPs demonstrated a mean particle size of 196 ± 6.80 nm. XRD analysis demonstrated the amorphous state of the PLGA‐BA formulation, a characteristic vital for sustained drug release and enhanced bioavailability. The PLGA‐BA NPs exhibited spherical morphology with encapsulation and loading efficiency of 83 ± 9.24% and 7.0 ± 0.4%, respectively, highlighting efficient encapsulation of the drug within the PLGA NPs. In vitro, cytotoxicity assessments demonstrated enhanced anti‐proliferative efficacy against breast and lung tumor cells when utilizing PLGA‐BA NPs in comparison to free BA. This research underlines the potential of employing the developed PLGA‐based nanocarrier to optimize the therapeutic efficacy of BA.