Author Rishabha Malviya, Pranati Srivastava and G.T. Kulkarni
With the increasing interest in polymers of natural origin, the pharmaceutical world has compliance to use most of them in their formulations. Moreover, the tremendous orientation of pharma world towards these naturally derived polymers has become a subject of increasing interest to discover, extract and purify such compounds, mucilage, as a potent candidate to be used in various pharmaceutical formulations, Natural polymer Pharmaceutical application Pharmaceutical excipient, plant derived polymers have mucilages can occur in high concentrations in different evoked tremendous interest due to their diverse pharmaceutical applications such as diluent, binder, disintegrant in tablets, thickeners in oral liquids, protective colloids in suspensions, gelling agents in gels and bases in suppository, also used in cosmetics, textiles, paints and paper-making, these polymers such as natural gums and mucilage are biocompatible, cheap and easily available and are preferred to semi synthetic and synthetic excipients because of their lack of toxicity, low cost, availability, soothing action and non irritant nature, Polysaccharide hydrocolloids including mucilages, gums and glucans, polysaccharides constitute a structurally diverse class of biological macromolecules with a broad range of physicochemical properties which are widely used for various applications in pharmacy and medicine, Mucilages are most used as adjuvant in pharmaceutical preparations, with wide range of applications such as thickening, binding, disintegrating, suspending, emulsifying, stabilizing and gelling agents. Mucilages may be used as sustained and controlled release formulations , binding agent in pharmaceutical formulations, Gelling Agent, Suspending Agent, Disintegrant, Sustained Release Polymer
