Abstract:
Alginate, a natural anionic polysaccharide extracted from brown algae (Phaeopiceae) has been widely used on microencapsulation method because of its unique properties of forming a colloidal layer slowly dissolved on water. One of the brown algae described as producers of alginates is sargassum siliquosum found growing along the rocky coast of south Sulawesi Indonesia. As the representatives, S. siliquosum collated from Barrang Lompo island of Makassar, Tanete Riaja village on Barru district and Mangara Bombang on Takalar, had been extracted and their physic-chemistry and pharmaceutical properties had been determined. Among the three regions, the highest quantity of alginate was obtained from Makassar followed by Barru and Takalar region at respectively 25,78%, 21,34% and 13,09%. Identification of the functional groups of alginate by FT-IR and examination of its viscosity, Ph, solubility, water content, ash content, and heavy metal contaminations, described that those sodium alginates generally achieved the quality standards of Pharmaceutical properties. The microcapsules of theophylline were prepared by cross-linked method using Sodium alginates axtracted from Barrang Lompo island of Makassar with calcium chloride. A homogenous spherical shape of microsphere with size distribution about 641 μm in diameter was formed with sodium alginates on the concentration of 5%. Interference studies showed that there were no interactions occurred between theophylline and the coating agent. However, the drug content estimation calculated by UV spectrophotometric determined a low drug entrapment efficiency of theophylline in the microcapsules.
