DOI: 10.36347/sajp

Pages: 53-57

The Herbal or natural excipients have a great advantage over their synthetic analogues as these are non-toxic, less expensive and freely available. The increasing awareness about these herbal excipients, which are manly polymers of natural origin, the pharmaceutical industries are getting more inclined towards their use in formulation development. The plant derived gums, mucilages from natural sources like carrageen an, thaumatin, lard, storax, agar, gum acacia, tragacanth and many more to name comply with many requirements of pharmaceutical excipients. These can be preferred for formulation development as being stable and involving less regulatory issues as compared to their synthetic counter parts. They can also be easily modified to meet the specific needs, thereby being a potent and economic vehicle for delivering active pharmaceutical ingredient in formulation. Thus present study aims to throw light on the potential of natural excipients which can be proposed to be used as diluent, binder, disintegrant as well as lubricant in various types of formulations as they are biocompatible and capable of giving additional nutrition to the developed dosage form.