Recently, numerous scientific articles related to water soluble chitosan (WSC) have been released. Since the solubility of chitosan is restricted to acidic media, and there is an increasing demand against to the derivative of the chitosan polymer, which is mainly to obtain a material both having solubility in aqueous media and also being chitosan property. One of the benefits of synthesis of water soluble chitosan is to obtain a water soluble polymer is easily miscible with a variety of compounds in aqueous solutions. In this review, water soluble chitosan derivatives are principally examined in terms of their biological and other applications. Biological activities of WSC derivatives are analyzed in the sense of antioxidant, antimicrobial and anticancer activity, respectively. Thereby, the collected data may be useful to compare novel synthesized water soluble chitosan derivatives with alternative structures.

In the present study, porous calcium alginate films have been developed by the addition of 0.02, 0.1, and 0.5% (w/v) PVA to sodium alginate film solutionss. Poly(vinyl) alcohol played the role of a pore-forming agent for calcium alginate films, and the controlled pore sizes of the films were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analyses. Human fibroblast cell attachment was performed on the porous calcium alginate films (0.5-Ca-Alg), and then the film was coated with 1 and 3 wt % silver nanowires. Cell proliferation was enhanced on films after the coating of the silver nanowires. The MTT assay was performed on the calcium alginate films and silver nanowire-coated films, and the films were found to be nontoxic to human foreskin fibroblast cells at the end of 72 h of exposure. The existence of silver nanowires on the porous calcium alginate film endowed the material with good antibacterial activity. The swelling ability of the porous and silver nanowire-coated film (0.5-Ca-Alg-1/AgNW) increased by ∼64% in simulated body fluid (pH = 7.4) and distilled water compared to a nonporous film (Ca-Alg). The water vapor transmission rate of Ca-Alg was ∼45% enhanced thanks to the porosity of films and the existence of AgNW. Hereby, it is demonstrated that the novel silver nanowire-doped porous alginate materials would be potential wound dressing agents with desired physical properties, antibacterial activity, and availability to cell proliferation.