Chitooligosaccharide: An evaluation of physicochemical and biological properties with the proposition for determination of thermal degradation products

Being the most versatile biopolymer, chitooligosaccharide/chitosan oligosaccharide (COS) has been extensively studied for a range of exceptional biological activities and potential developments of novel medical devices and systems in biomedical and pharmaceutical fields. While possessing intrinsic biocompatibility, mucoadhesiveness, and non-toxicity it gained more interests in the biomedical development of novel systems, devices, and pharmaceutical formulations. The bioactive relativity of chitosan and COS are of highly significant and thus explored in this paper while highlighting its multiple biological activities and promising biomedical applications. More emphasis is on the molecular weight, degree of acetylation/deacetylation, degree of polymerization and reactive groups in relation to chitin and chitosan. Despite COS wide acceptance and utilization, the associated viscosity and instability are crucial factors that posed a great challenge to researchers. The apparent reason attributed to instability and viscosity could be the presence intrinsic variable oligomers within COS. Due to lack of data on safety and impurity analysis of thermal exposure of COS, we hypothesized that different molecules could be generated with thermal treatment of COS, thus finally suggested a prospective determination of thermal degradation product(s)in COS. Hence the aim of this paper is to highlight COS physicochemical and biological significance with reference to its recent developments and propose a further chemical analysis thermal treated COS. This could trigger future researchers for possible isolation and characterization of distinct biomolecules from COS.