Abstract
Marine organisms are good candidates for biomedical field due to their characteristic properties like biocompatibility and biodegradability which is almost uncountable and continuously increasing with the research in deeper waters. Sulfated polysaccharides found in different algae species in the marine environment, resemble the chemical and biological properties of mammalian glycosaminoglycans because of which they are receiving growing interest for application in health-related fields. Alginates belongs to a family of un-branched binary copolymers, consisting of (1→4) linked β-D Mannuronic acid (M) and α-L-glucuronic acid (G) residues of varying composition and sequence. The potential commercial uses of alginates is due to simplification of alginates chemical structure which consisting of two monomer units like M-block and G-block. Commercial alginates are polyuronic saccharides that are isolated from the cell walls of a number of brown seaweeds or brown algae species around the world and also produced as an extracellular matrix by certain bacteria. The improvement in the performance of marine-derived polysaccharides will directly impact on their competitiveness against synthetic biodegradable polymers. Even though, to obtain medical grade biopolymers from marine raw materials in a reproducible way strong efforts are still required. The future growth in the market of alginates is expected to be most likely qualitative rather than quantitative as manufacturers moving away from alginate commodity to refined products. In this review special emphasis was given on the occurrence along with the extraction of alginates, their different properties (specifically ion binding, gel formation and biological properties)and finally reviewing the application of the alginates in specific sectors like biomedical and pharmaceutical, in particular their participation on the development of controlled drug delivery systems , tissue engineering and food industry.
