Halle an der Saale, 18th August 2023: While others are still pondering the end of summer, the chitosan industry is meeting in Iceland's northernmost city, Siglufjörður, and presenting the future around this fascinating substance. Five outstanding lectures will lead to the total of 48 international profound insights on chitin and chitosan that will crown your visit to this nature-rich area. Our Managing Director and renowned chitosan expert, Katja Richter, will present ways to ensure quality management of different raw material sources of chitosan.

The DFG is establishing eight new priority programs for 2023. A total of 53 million euros will be available to them over the next 3 years. The aim of the priority programs is to investigate the scientific basis of particularly current or emerging research areas. We are therefore very excited that one of them is focused on the topic of chitin and chitosan.

Commercial extraction of chitin is mainly from the shells of crustaceans such as snow crabs. Fungi and insects are alternative sources of chitin, which are poorly usable so far. The expansion of insect farming for animal feed production in recent years has increased the availability of insect biomass. In the following, we present a review that provides an overview of recently published studies on the extraction of chitin from insects and its conversion to chitosan.

Pangolins received a lot of attention in the current corona crisis. But what kind of animals are these pangolins, which look like a pine cone when rolled up? And why do they need chitin in their special diet? Answers to those questions and more facts in this article.

In March 2016, 289 publications about chitosan and chitosan derivative have been released. Most articles investigated chitosan nanoparticels and polymers, as well as chitosan in pharmaceutical preparations. Majority of chitosan research takes place in China (55 articles), USA (36) and India (21). Development of new scaffold materials for in vitro tissue engineering is an important topic for regenerative medicine. Biomaterial scaffolds need to be biocompatible and cell growth supportive.

In February 2012 the Technical University (TU) of Vienna filed a patent for a new production method of the popular pharmaceutical raw material N-acetylneuraminic acid (NeuNAc). Molds were used as “chemical factories” and were combined with the biological raw material chitin to obtain the desired final product.

A cooperation project of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the American University of Minnesota opens a new window to the production of bio fuels. The common starchy plant substrates are seen to be substituted by cellulose and chitin – natural polysaccharides that are not used as food.

Bruno Alonso and Emmanuel Belamie of the Charles Gerhardt Institute in Montpellier, France developed a new large-scale synthesis of bioorganic-inorganic nanocomposites: self-organising chitin-silicon dioxide nanocomposites with unpredecented specificity in texture and structure of the product.

150 Years ago C. Rouget discovered the biopolymer chitosan when cooking chitin in a base. Ever since, the interest in this polymer is increasing constantly. On the one hand new application fields are developed over and over again. On the other hand the primary material chitin is a renewable resource, which is generated as by-product in huge annual quantities in food-industry.