Natural gums and modified natural gums as sustained-release carriers

Although natural gums and their derivatives are used widely in pharmaceutic al dosage forms, their use as biodegradable polymeric materials to deliver bioactive agents has been hampered by the synthetic materials. These natura l polysaccharides do hold advantages over the synthetic polymers, generally because they are nontoxic, less expensive, and freely available. Natural g ums can also be modified to have tailor-made materials for drug delivery sy stems and thus can compete with the synthetic biodegradable excipients avai lable in the market. In this review, recent developments in the area of nat ural gums and their derivatives as carriers in the sustained release of dru gs are explored.