Tamarind Seed Polysaccharide and its Modifications- Versatile Pharmaceutical Excipients – A Review

In recent years there has been an important development in different dosage forms for existing and newly designed drugs and natural products, semisynthetic as well as synthetic excipients often need to be used for a variety of purposes. Gums and mucilages are widely used natural materials for conventional and novel dosage forms. With the increasing interest in polymers of natural origin, the pharmaceutical world has compliance to use most of them in their formulation. In the present review we have discussed naturally derived polysaccharide as a potential candidate for novel drug delivery system. These natural materials have advantages over synthetic ones since they are chemically inert non-toxic, less expensive, biodegradable and widely available. They can be modified in different ways to obtain tailor made materials for drug delivery system and thus can compete with the available synthetic excipients. Controlled release drug delivery systems are gaining importance in last few decades for their clinical benefits which are not obtained from conventional oral drug delivery systems. Hydrophillic matrices involving natural polysaccharides are an interesting option for developing sustained release formulations. One such polysaccharide is tamarind seed polysaccharide (TSP) isolated from seed kernel of Tamarindus indica. The utility of TSP and modified TSP as an excipient in novel drug delivery systems is the main focus of this review.