Chitosan gel produced from Black Soldier Fly exuviae for applications in oral and teeth health

The main objective of this project is to obtain chitosan from exuviae, a by-product of the production of Black Soldier Fly, to characterize and apply this biopolymer in dentistry. To achieve this, in a first phase, chitin will be extracted from the exuviae and converted into chitosan with different degrees of deacetylation. This biopolymer will be characterized by FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), TGA (Thermogravimetric analysis), intrinsic viscosity and X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman dispersion spectroscopy. After this, a gel will be produced with ideal pharmacotechnical characteristics for oral applications and without cytotoxicity against oral cells and the antimicrobial potential will be determined by the disk diffusion method and the quantitative suspension method against fungi and bacteria most prevalent in the oral cavity such as Streptococcus mutans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Actinomyces spp., Fusobacterium nucleatum, Candida albicans, Candida glabrata, Candida krusei, Candida tropicalis. At the end of this project, the aim is to obtain chitosan from a new source (BSF exuvia), develop and characterize a gel and evaluate it against microorganisms for oral applications produced from a by-product with traceability, characteristics and relevant potential for countless dental applications.