Background: Hydrogels are suitable for various applications, such as biomedical engineering, agriculture, bioseparation, oil recovery, encapsulation, and tissue repair. Chitosan (CHI) is a natural homogeneous linear amino polysaccharide used to produce smart drug delivery systems because of its nature and potential applications. GLY has desirable properties such as low cost, high functionality, availability, and high solubility in water, making it a promising crosslinking agent. Quantum dots (QD) are small fluorescent nanocrystals with unique size-dependent optical and electronic properties, useful for nanomedicine tissue regeneration. Purpose: In this work, we combined chitosan (CHI)-based matrices with quantum dots (QD) to create a fluorescent system for photoprocesses. Results: The rheological properties of chitosan aqueous solutions remained unchanged before or after red light irradiation. Chitosan aqueous solutions were crosslinked with glyoxal (CHI-GLY) and a glyoxal concentration of 0.1% w promoted appropriate crosslinking, resulting in the best gelling structure. An indirect cell cytotoxicity test revealed that CHI-GLY hydrogel presented over 80% cell viability for normal and brain tumor cells. Conclusions: These results suggest that CHI-GLY is a suitable material to be used as a supporting structure. Consequently, the QD-CHI_GLY matrix can be easily applied to biomedical uses, such as neural regeneration and drug delivery systems.