The potential of chitosan for the oral administration of peptides

Over recent years, a major challenge in drug delivery has been the design of appropriate vehicles for the oral administration of macromolecular drugs (peptides and proteins). Indeed, despite the increasing market value of these complex molecules, their clinical use has been highly limited by their reduced oral bioavailability. Among the different delivery approaches explored so far, those based on the use of the polysaccharide chitosan have opened promising alternatives towards this ambitious goal. This is due to the interesting physicochemical and biopharmaceutical properties of this polymer. This article describes the advances that have been made in the design of chitosan-based systems specially adapted for the oral administration of peptides. These systems include solutions, microspheres, nanoparticles, nanocapsules and liposomes. More specifically, this article discusses the efficacy of the different delivery approaches for improving the absorption of peptides, and analyses the various mechanisms that have been proposed for the understanding of their efficacy.