Natural Excipients: Uses of Pharmaceutical Formulations

With the increasing interest in polymers of natural origin, the pharmaceutical world has compliance to use most of them in their formulations. Pharmaceutical formulation development involves various components in addition to the active pharmaceutical ingredients. Nature has provided us a wide variety of materials to help improve and sustain the health of all living things either directly or indirectly. In recent years there has been an important development in different dosage forms for existing and newly designed drugs and natural products, and semi-synthetic as well as synthetic excipients often need to be used for a variety of purposes. Gum and mucilages are widely used natural materials for conventional and novel dosage forms. This article gives an overview of natural excipients which are used in controlled drug delivery systems. Mainly the natural excipient used is biocompatible, cost effective and provides as nutrition supplements.