The Moderato project aims at designing novel families of chemically modified polysaccharides, to be used as bio-based functional coatings in order to impart paper materials with barrier properties, which will be enhanced and maintained upon changes of relative humidity and temperature, for end-uses in the flexible food packaging field.  The novelty is to exploit the appealing Passerini-three component reaction (P-3CR), and to apply it to both polysaccharide chains (carboxymethyl cellulose, alginic acid) and cellulose particles (oxidized cellulose microfibr