# The Role of Chitosan-Based Materials in Interactions with Antibiotics: An Overview of In Vitro and In Silico Studies

## TL;DR

This paper reviews how chitosan-based materials can help remove antibiotics like tetracycline and ciprofloxacin from water, using both experiments and computer simulations.

## Contribution

The paper highlights recent in silico studies on tetracycline adsorption by chitosan-based materials and summarizes key findings on antibiotic removal.

## Key findings

- Chitosan-based materials effectively adsorb common antibiotics such as tetracycline and ciprofloxacin.
- Chemical modifications to chitosan enhance its ability to bind antibiotics under various physical chemistry conditions.
- In silico studies provide molecular-level insights into how chitosan interacts with antibiotics.

## Abstract

The increasing presence of antibiotics in aquatic environments is a growing concern, causing ecological and public health risks. Even low concentrations of antibiotics may lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The interest in building new materials that can be used as templates for removing pollutants from the environment has been growing year upon year. We review the research involving adsorption processes that occur in chitosan-based materials that are employed to remove antibiotics from water. Since covering all the antibiotics that can be found in the environment would be an overwhelming task, we concentrated our efforts on describing the studies related to the removal of tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, cephalexin, and azithromycin, which are perhaps the most ubiquitous ones. We present the chemical modifications introduced into chitosan and chitosan-based materials commonly used as antibiotic adsorbents, as well as the influence of physical chemistry conditions on these processes. In addition, we also review in silico studies that have been carried out to obtain molecular-level insights into the interactions between chitosan-based adsorbents and the four mentioned antibiotics. Particular emphasis is placed on our recent computational work regarding the adsorption of tetracycline by various chitosan-based materials.