Natural Binding Agents in Tablet Formulation

Binders are agents employed to impart cohesiveness to the granules. This ensures the tablet remains intact after compression. The development of new excipients for potential use as binding agent in tablet formulations continues to be of interest. This is because different binding agents can be useful in achieving various tablet mechanical strength and drug release properties for different pharmaceutical purpose. Natural polysaccharides are widely used in the pharmaceutical and food industry as excipients and additives due to their low toxicity, biodegradable, availability and low cost. Natural binders like different starches, gums, mucilages dried fruits possess binding capacity as well as some other properties like disintegrant, filler, sustain release, and these natural polymers are much safer and economical than polymers like PVP. Different starches like rice, potato, maize, corn, wheat, tapioca starch and gums like ferula gummosa boiss, gum olibanum, beilschmiedia seed gum, okro gum, aegle marmelod gum, gum cordial, okra gum and cassia roxburghii seeds gum and plant fruit like date palm fruit and orange peel pectin shows good potency as a binding agent.