The improved antiviral activities of amino-modified chitosan derivatives on Newcastle virus

Chitosan is widely used as a medical material because of its excellent biological activities. However, the low solubility of natural chitosan limited its medicinal activity to some extent. The solubility can be improved by introducing more active groups and lowering molecular weight. Therefore, 6-amine chitosan derivatives were synthesized in this paper since more active groups were introduced to increase the medicinal activity. Those derivatives were characterized by elemental analysis, HPLC, and FT-IR and the antiviral activity was tested by hemagglutination tests. Finally, 6-amine chitosan derivatives improved the antiviral activity, especially after the introduction of bromine ion. When 6-deoxy-6-bromo-N-phthaloyl chitosan was 1 g/L, they reduced the hemagglutination titer of virus to zero. The RT-PCR result showed that the expression level of TNF-alpha and IFN-beta increased significantly, which indicated that the antiviral activity of amino-modified chitosan worked through the stimulation of immune response.

Automated summary

This study synthesized 6-amine chitosan derivatives with more active groups to enhance medicinal activity, especially improving antiviral activity after the introduction of bromine ions. The results showed that the derivatives significantly increased the expression of TNF-alpha and IFN-beta, indicating that the antiviral activity of amino-modified chitosan worked through immune response stimulation.