ABSTRACT
Alginate (ALG) has several advantages such as high biocompatibility, biodegradability, nontoxicity, non-immunogenicity, chelating ability, and the susceptibility for chemical modification. It has been tailor-made to suit the requirements of many pharmaceutical and biomedical applications such as implantation of medical devices and artificial organs, tissue engineering, prostheses, ophthalmology, dentistry, bone repair, and drug delivery systems. Drug delivery systems, capable of releasing the drugs in a controlled manner are very important for health care. ALG gels are typically nanoporous and useful as a matrix for cell immobilization, entrapment of bioactive compounds such as low molecular weight drugs, macromolecular drugs including peptide hormones, polysaccharides, antibiotics, antigens, and enzymes. The ALG hydrogels possess physiochemical similarity to the native extracellular matrix, both compositionally and mechanically, and their high-water content offers them good biocompatibility. The ALG, being multifunctional is one of most widely studied biopolymer in biomedical and pharmaceutical fields.
