Natural Polymers in Drug Delivery Development

Polymers have been successfully employed in the formulation of solid, liquid and semisolid dosage forms and are specifically useful in the design of modified release drug delivery systems. Both synthetic and natural polymers have been investigated extensively for this purpose, but the use of natural polymers for pharmaceutical applications is attractive because they are economical, readily available, non-toxic, and capable of chemical modifications, potentially biodegradable and with few exceptions, also biocompatible. One of the most remarkable and useful features of a polymers swelling ability manifests itself when that swelling can be triggered by a change in the environment surrounding the delivery system. This review mainly put emphasis on description of various natural polymers used in drug delivery development process.