New Application of Gelatin in Pharmaceutical Field

Application of gelatin-current situation

Gelatin is mostly derived from bovine or fish’s skins and bones. As a kind of natural biopolymer material, it has the advantages of biodegradability, good biocompatibility, gel property and low cost, etc. It is a kind of traditional medical adjuvant widely used in the field of medicine. For a long time, gelatin used as capsule material, safe and effective; As a substrate, it is used as a gel agent; As a carrier, it is used in the drug delivery system of gene, vaccine and other drugs. But with the expansion of the application demand of gelatin, its disadvantages are becoming more and more obvious. In order to further broaden the application range of gelatin and better play the role of gelatin in the field of medicine, researchers modified gelatin to make up for its shortcomings. This paper briefly introduces the application of gelatin and modified gelatin in medicine field.

Capsule

Gelatin is widely used in the field of medicine because of its biodegradability, good biocompatibility and film formation, among which gelatin is the most widely used capsule material (hard capsule, soft capsule, microcapsule) and has a long history. Gelatin soft capsule is not only convenient for drug administration, but also the preparation technology does not affect the structure of hydrogel. At the same time, it is both a storage container for drugs and a reaction container for mixtures.

Plasma dilatancy agent

Gelatin is the hydrolyzed product of animal skins and bones. It is a polypeptide from biological origin and has good biocompatibility. After modification, gelatin has a lower freezing point and can maintain a liquid state at a lower temperature. It can be used as a plasma substitute in clinical applications, mainly for blood volume supplement of surgical trauma and hypovolemic shock, etc., and has been listed as essential medicine by the World Health Organization (WHO). At present, the plasma dilatant products which are widely used in China include polygelatin peptide injection and succinyl gelatin injection. The former is a urea-linked gelatin injection with hexamethylene-diisocyanate crosslinked by urea-bridge bond. The latter is a crosslinked succinyl gelatin injection with succinic anhydride as the crosslinking agent. Gelatin can be used as plasma volume expander to solve the problems of clinical blood shortage and blood type in blood transfusion.

Tissue engineering and drug delivery

Gelatin is widely used in tissue engineering and drug delivery systems because of its high biocompatibility, biodegradability, no other by-products after degradation in vivo, no immunogenicity and blood compatibility, and the same composition and biological properties as collagen.

Others

Gelatin can be used as sponge substrate, play hemostasis, and is used in surgery and tooth extraction. A company has developed a kind of hemostatic cotton with bovine gelatin and hemostatic enzyme as the main components. Local injection can play a hemostatic effect, and patients have no discomfort, but this kind of hemostatic cotton may cause adhesion risk.

A new type of gelatin hemostatic cotton was prepared by cross-linking gelatin with aldehyde hyaluronic acid as cross-linking agent, which improved the hemostatic property of gelatin, and had the effect of analgesic and promoting wound tissue healing. In addition, gelatin is also used to assist in the diagnosis of diseases, such as gelatin-modified gold nanoparticles can be used to assist in the non-invasive diagnosis of bladder cancer.

The new application of gelatin will be more widely in the near future.