Novel drug delivery carrier from alginate-carrageenan and glycerol as plasticizer

Drug delivery carriers are materials that can be used to administer drugs into the human body. Alginate and carrageenan are natural polymers that have potential as drug delivery material. Therefore in this study conducted a new innovation using carrageenan and alginates from extract of red seaweed and brown seaweed as base materials of capsule. This is expected to improve the quality of the used materials so it's easier to obtain the capsule with base material from carrageenan-alginate that has good quality as drug delivery carrier. Moreover, in the manufacture of capsules from carrageenan and alginates also added plasticizers in order to maintain the elasticity and the swelling degree of the capsules are made so that the capsules are not brittle. In addition, in this study used glycerol because it is a useful plasticizer to increase the plasticity of a material by filling the cavities between monomers. The capsules were prepared with four variations of glycerol concentration are A, B, C and D. In these capsule was analyzed of surface morphology with SEM, test of swelling degree and test of dissolution kinetics for some acidity level. Analysis of surface morphology with SEM shows that the capsule shell has very small pores. The average of swelling degree for capsules A, B, C and D are 452.4%, 599.0%, 730.66% and 731.25%, respectively. FTIR analysis shows that the presence of glycerol can increase the number of hydrogen bonds that are formed. The acidity level affects the dissolution profile of each capsules. In general with an increasingly alkaline environment causes all the capsules will be easier to release. This is because the increasing of acidic groups in the copolymer causes the capsule to be more easily occur neutralization reaction in a more alkaline environment so that the disintegration of capsules can occur more quickly. In addition from this study also can be seen that the increasing concentration of glycerol can cause the rate of capsule dissolution becomes slower. This is due to the increased of swelling degree from the capsule along with the glycerol that has been added.