‘Sweet as a Nut’: Production and use of nanocapsules made of glycopolymer or polysaccharide shell

Polymeric nanomaterials are deemed to unlock the potential of therapeutics and improve their efficiency, to allow future advances in nanomedicine. Among these, sugar-based nanocapsules made of synthetic or natural carbohydrate-based macromolecular chains have raised significant interest in bio-applications. This review highlights physical or/and chemical techniques to construct both water- and oil-filled sugar-based nanocapsules. These include soft matter processes, such as (double) emulsification, coacervation or layer-by layer fabrication as well as more recently developed processes such as Polymerization Induced Self Assembly (PISA) or template core removal. Properties and bio-applications of glyconanocapsules (GNCs) are summarized and open challenges as well as opportunities for the future development of this field are being discussed.