Now, just before Christmas holidays, the question arises, what to cook and what kind of wine to serve for a few cozy hours with the loved ones? Suitable for the peaceful time, we present some interesting literature about chitosan. Every now and then, wine and chitosan are mentioned together in various publications. How do they fit together? What can chitosan be used for in wine and can it possible save my corked wine?

Mother nature provides the best ideas for the development of innovative, bio-inspired materials for medical engineering. In the following study, researchers utilized the outstanding properties of Chitin in combination with silk fibroin for preparation of an optically transparent hybrid material, inspired by the constituent of arthropods cuticles. The study moreover addresses the highly interesting and future-oriented applications, like the direct measurement of glucose content in the eye with smart contact lenses or scratch resistant display covers, using this biomimetric composite.

There are various fields of application for chitosan-based hydrogels. Hydrogels can be manufactured by chemical or physical cross-linking. The hydrophilic groups of chitosan enable the absorption of water. Chitosan hydrogels are suitable as scaffold materials for tissue engineering by mimicking the extracellular matrix. Additionally an application as drug delivery system for drugs, protein or growth factors is also possible.[1] In the following, we briefly present a number of publications about the development and application of chitosan hydrogels using chitosans by HMC.

In August, 320 articles about chitosan and chitosan derivatives were published in various scientific journals (PubMed). Seven of these articles are dedicated to the exciting topic of electrospun chitosan nanofibers. For generation of nanofibrous structures in tissue engineering, electrospinning is a simple and inexpensive technology. Electrospun nanofiber non-woven mats are highly porous and offer a large surface area. The biocompatible, biodegradable and bacteriostatic chitosan is perfectly suitable for creation of nanofibers and application as scaffold material.