Page 319 - Advances in Textile Biotechnology

300 Advances in textile biotechnology

12.4 Applications
In this section the most relevant applications of chitin, chitosan and bac-

terial cellulose are briefly described with special focus on textile and medical
(wound dressing) fi elds.

12.4.1 Chitin and chitosan
The growing interest in chitin and chitosan exploitation is tightly connected
to their unique properties, such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, non-
toxicity and ability to chelate heavy metals. Chitin and its derivatives are
widely used as a coating material for nylons, cotton, and wool fi bres. The

use of such modifi ed fibres includes the production of wound dressings,
medical textiles, sanitary absorbents and non-allergenic, deodorizing, and
antimicrobial underwear, sportwear and socks. The addition of chitin into
the coating of waterproof textiles causes a large increase in its water vapour
permeability. Moreover, the finishing of wool, cotton and polyester fi bres

with chitin derivatives such as chitosan improves their dyeability (Julià
et al., 2000) and colorfastness (Najafi et al., 2008). Numerous publications

report on chitin and chitosan based materials with high-value applications
especially in the chemical–pharmaceutical industry (Felse and Panda et al.,
1999) and medicine (Khor and Lim et al., 2003). A wide variety of chitosan-
based materials are commercially available for this kind of application.
Some commercially available chitosan-based products for medical applica-
tions are: CeloxTM (www.celoxmedical.com); HemCon® 100% chitosan
sponge bandages, haemostatic and surgical dressings, dental dressings, and
plasters (www.hemcon.com); Chitoskin, another sponge-like product,
comprising 50% chitosan and 50% bovine gelatine (www.sangui.de); and
TM
TM
KiOnutrime-Cs and KiOmedine (www.kytozyme.com). There are no
textile bandages coated with chitosan currently on the market.
Chitin and chitosan in combination with other biopolymers and their

derivatives have been used in their fibre forms to design various types of
wound dressing. Loke et al. (2000) and Wang et al. (2002) demonstrated that
intrinsically antimicrobial chitosan can serve as a good platform to be
further upgraded for application as a wound-healing promoter. The biocom-
patibility of some derivatives such as dibutyryl chitin (DBC) in the context
of wound dressings has been studied by Muzzarelli et al. (2005). DBC fi bres
were obtained by the wet-spinning method followed by preparation of a
non-woven material further reinforced with 5-methylpyrrolidinone chito-
san. It was found that DBC fibres are suitable for contacting both intact

and wounded human tissues. Pielka et al. (2003) coated polypropylene non-
woven materials with regenerated chitin and its derivative DBC. The mat-
erials obtained caused no cytotoxic effects in in vitro or in vivo studies and

© Woodhead Publishing Limited, 2010