LAUSR

Development of drug delivery systems has emerged out as significant field in medicinal chemistry because of their localized action, low frequency of drug administration and sustained release of drug at the site of action for a prolonged time. Out of various reported methods, in the present work, we report use of five different polysaccharides for the development of sustained release systems for curcumin, utilizing a surfactant, cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). Four of these were novel systems and were first optimized. Sustained release of optimized supports was studied by anti-oxidant, serum protein binding and anti-cathepsin activities. Particle size, FT-IR and SEM were used to characterize the modified supports. CTAB-modified-NCCS, -pectin-15 and Alg-5 were found to be the best supports as they released appreciable amount of curcumin for a longer time. The results have also been interpreted using chemical modeling studies.