Isolation and Characterization of Tamarind Kernel Gum: A Novel Natural Floating Polymer

摘要

Floating drug delivery systems (FDDS) are aimed to retain the drug in the stomach and are useful for drugs that are poorly soluble or unstable in intestinal fluids. The underlying principle is very simple i.e., to make the dosage form less dense than the gastric fluids so that it can float on them. The drug usually keeps floating in the gastric fluid and slowly dissolves at a pre-determined rate to release the drug from the dosage form and maintain constant drug levels in the blood. Several approaches are currently used to retain the dosage form in the stomach. The principle of the floating tablets is simple and practically approach to achieve increased gastric residence time to obtain controlled release. The polymers play an important role in the formulation of floating drug delivery systems as they should make the dosage form less dense and able to release the drug from the dosage form in a controlled manner. Though, there are several floating polymers available in the market, there is continuous need to develop floating polymers which are safe and inexpensive. The aim of the work was to isolate and characterize the Tamarind kernel gum as novel floating polymer.