**1. Introduction**

Polymers are the chemical compounds that play a significant role in the development of medicine and engineering with day-to-day life. Polymers are made of several repeating units of monomers, which decide the structure and properties. In the field of medicine, a range of polymeric materials is being used, however, biodegradable polymers gaining more attention.

Brown algae are composed primarily of alginates, a carbohydrate polymer found in the form of an insoluble combination of potassium, sodium, magnesium, and calcium salts of alginic acid that are structural components of brown seaweed cell walls. They are unbranched binary polymers made up of 1, 4 linkages between β-d-Mannuronic (M) and α-l-Guluronic (G) acids [1]. The composition of alginates i.e. G: M ratio varies based on the source [2]. They can also be tailored or resized in many varieties by varying molecular weight, cation content, particle form, volume fraction and, G: M ratio.

Alginates were first used in 1883 by a researcher named Edward Stanford, and commercial development commenced in 1927. The global production of alginates has now risen to about 40,000 tonnes per year. Alginates are used extensively in the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and dental industries [3]. Perhaps, in recent years, the medical and pharmaceutical industries have become incredibly influential in biopolymers, specifically alginates.

Alginates are particularly known for their applications in pharmaceutical industries for controlled drug delivery [4], wound healing [5], dermatology [6],

**Figure 1.** *Alginate –Brown algae a seaweeds.*

and scaffolds [7] because of their properties such as natural disintegration, gel formation, biocompatibility, and non-toxicity. Alginates are a natural gum that has an advantage over synthetic polymers because they form hydrogels, are less expensive, and are readily accessible. Alginate gels may also be orally administered into the body in a minimally invasive manner, enabling a wide range of pharmaceutical applications. Alginate gels are promising biomaterials for tissue engineering and cell transplantation, to replace organs in patients that have lost or failed organs or tissues (**Figure 1**) [8, 9].
