Uses of tailor-made plant starches in drug delivery

Starch is well-known category of natural polymers being extensively explored in pharmaceutical industry and mainly obtained from different plant parts and organs. To maximize the utility of starches as excipients to develop various drug delivery dosage forms, their functional properties can be modified by chemical modifications, i.e., oxidation, esterification, etherification, cross-linking, grafting, and so on. Chemically modified starch materials have been found capable of meeting the requirements of pharmaceutical excipients. The present chapter provides details on various chemical modifications of starches and the uses of chemically modified starch materials as pharmaceutical excipients in various drug delivery formulations.