Science and Technology of Alginates: A Review

Polymers are chemical substances that have substantially impacted the advancement of engineering and medicine in daily life. Alginates are natural polysaccharide polymers isolated from brown seaweed. Due to their distinctive physicochemical characteristics and broad range of biological activity, compounds have great prospects in the food, agriculture, biomedical, and pharmaceutical industries, and it has astounding characteristics like biocompatibility, ability to form gels, nontoxicity, biodegradability, and simplicity of processing. Alginates can be used as a matrix for three-dimensional tissue cultures, as adjuvants for antibiotics, in cell transplantation for diabetes, or in the form of alginate-based drugs for the treatment of neurological illnesses as well as for antibacterial and antiviral therapy, according to recent developments. In-depth descriptions of properties, categories, and application areas are provided in the chapter.