Highlighting the impact of chitosan on the development of gastroretentive drug delivery systems

The development of gastroretentive systems have been growing lately due to the high demand for carriers that increase drug bioavailability and therapeutic effectiveness after oral administration. Most of systems reported up to now are based on chitosan (CS) due to its peculiar properties, such as cationic nature, biodegradability, bio-compatibil ity and important mucoadhesiveness, which make CS a promising biopolymer to design effective gastroretentive systems. In light of this, we reported in this review the CS versatility to fabricate different types of nano-and microstructured gastroretentive systems. For a better understanding of the gastric retention mech-anisms, we highlighted expandable, density-based, magnetic, mucoadhesive and superporous systems. The bio-logical and chemical properties of CS, anatomophysiological aspects related to gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and some applications of these systems are also described here. Overall, this review may assist researchers to explore new strategies to design safe and efficient gastroretentive systems in order to popularize them in the treatment of diseases and clinical practices (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V.