Bioactive polysaccharides from Aegle marmelos fruit: Recent trends on extraction, bio-techno functionality, and food applications

Polysaccharides from non-conventional sources, such as fruits, have gained significant attention recently. Aegle marmelos (Bael), a non-conventional fruit, is an excellent source of biologically active components with potential indigenous therapeutic and food applications. Apart from polyphenolic components, this is an excellent source of mucilaginous polysaccharides. Polysaccharides are one the major components of bael fruit, having a high amount of galactose and glucuronic acid, which contributes to its potential therapeutic properties. Therefore, this review emphasizes the conventional and emerging techniques of polysaccharide extraction from bael fruit. Insight into the attributes of polysaccharide components, their techno-functional properties, characterization of bael fruit polysaccharide, emulsifying properties, binding properties, reduction of hazardous dyes, application of polysaccharides in film formation, application of polysaccharide as a nanocomposite, and biological activities of bael fruit polysaccharides are discussed. This review also systematically overviews the relationship between extraction techniques, structural characteristics, and biological activities. Additionally, recommendations, future perspectives, and new valuable insight towards better utilization of bael fruit polysaccharide have been given importance, which can be promoted in the long term.

Natural gums and their derivatives based hydrogels: in biomedical, environment, agriculture, and food industry

The hydrogels based on natural gums and chemically derivatized natural gums have great interest in pharmaceutical, food, cosmetics, and environmental remediation, due to their: economic viability, sustainability, nontoxicity, biodegradability, and biocompatibility. Since these natural gems are from plants, microorganisms, and seaweeds, they offer a great opportunity to chemically derivatize and modify into novel, innovative biomaterials as scaffolds for tissue engineering and drug delivery. Derivatization improves swelling properties, thereby developing interest in agriculture and separating technologies. This review highlights the work done over the past three and a half decades and the possibility of developing novel materials and technologies in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. This review has compiled various natural gums, their source, chemical composition, and chemically derivatized gums, various methods to synthesize hydrogel, and their applications in biomedical, food and agriculture, textile, cosmetics, water purification, remediation, and separation fields.

A review on challenges and issues with carboxymethylation of natural gums: The widely used excipients for conventional and novel dosage forms

Diverse properties of natural gums have made them quite useful for various pharmaceutical applications. However, they suffer from various problems, including unregulated hydration rates, microbial degradation, and decline in viscosity during warehousing. Among various chemical procedures for modification of gums, carboxymethylation has been widely studied due to its simplicity and efficiency. Despite the availability of numerous research articles on natural gums and their uses, a comprehensive review on carboxymethylation of natural gums and their applications in the pharmaceutical and other biomedical fields is not published until now. This review outlines the classification of gums and their derivatization methods. Further, we have discussed various techniques of carboxymethylation, process of determination of degree of substitution, and functionalization pattern of substituted gums. Detailed information about the application of carboxymethyl gums as drug delivery carriers has been described. The article also gives a brief account on tissue engineering and cell delivery potential of carboxymethylated gums.

Ghatti gum-base graft copolymer: a plausible platform for pH-controlled delivery of antidiabetic drugs

In the present study, we aimed to develop a novel pH-sensitive polymeric delivery system (GG-g-PMMA) for antidiabetic therapy via grafting ghatti gum (GG) with methyl methacrylate (MMA) chains. The free radical polymerization technique was adopted to graft ghatti gum with methyl methacrylate, using ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) as a redox initiator. The impact on grafting parameters such as grafting percentage (G%) and grafting efficiency (GE), of monomer and initiator concentrations was evaluated. The batch with higher grafting efficiency and percentage grafting was selected and characterized by elemental analysis (C, H and N), DSC, FT-IR spectroscopy, XRD, 1H-NMR and SEM morphology study. In addition, the efficacy of GG-g-PMMA-based pellets loaded with the hypoglycemic agent, metformin hydrochloride, to sustain drug release was investigated. In vitro release studies demonstrated a pH-dependent sustained release of the drug from GG-g-PMMA pellets. In addition, acute oral toxicity studies and histopathological analysis suggested the safety and biocompatibility of the grafted gum. Most importantly, in vivo efficacy studies underscored the efficient hypoglycemic potential of the prepared formulation, which was comparable to that of a sustained release marketed formulation. These results suggest that the developed pH-sensitive polymeric delivery system (GG-g-PMMA) might represent a promising delivery vehicle for facilitated antidiabetic therapy.

Synergistic combination of natural bioadhesive bael fruit gum and chitosan/nano-hydroxyapatite: A ternary bioactive nanohybrid for bone tissue engineering

In this work, we have explored the polysaccharide nature of bael fruit gum (BFG) motivated from the current findings about the substantial role of the polysaccharides in bone tissue engineering. The nanocomposite scaffold (CSH-BFG) was prepared by blending BFG, nano-hydroxyapatite (n-HA) and chitosan (CS) by co-precipitation approach and compared with n-HA and CS binary system (CSH). The analysis of different properties was carried out by SEM, TEM, FTIR, XRD and mechanical testing. The CSH-BFG scaffolds revealed a rough morphology and uniform distribution of particles along with strong chemical interactions among different components compared to the CSH scaffold. The incorporation of BFG in the scaffold resulted in significant increase of the compressive strength, compressive modulus, protein adsorption, biodegradation and swelling behaviour. The ternary system exhibited superior antibacterial activity against different bacterial pathogens compared to the binary system. The in vitro biomineralization ability was elucidated from the formation of thick apatite layer complementing the result of ARS study in the CSH-BFG nanocomposite. Our findings also revealed that BFG reinforced CSH nanocomposite exhibited enhanced cell adhesion and proliferation, osteogenic differentiation along with phenomenal cytocompatibility. Overall, our results signified that the fabricated CSH-BFG nanocomposite carries enormous potential to be applied in the bone remodelling procedures.