Drug delivery using alginate and chitosan beads: An Overview

Alginate and chitosan are commonly used polymers in modifying the drug release. These two polymers can be used together or separately to form drug loaded modified release beads. The ionotropic gelation method and a slight modification in various ways are used to prepare these beads of different characteristics. The bead characteristics like morphology, buoyancy, swelling nature, drug entrapment efficiency, adsorption, and release behavior are of importance. Also the therapeutic uses of the different modifications of the beads can be immense for the drugs which have low water solubility, short biological half life, require organ specific targeting, and are proteineous in nature.