**3.2 Pharmaceuticals**

In the present medical field, many medicines or drugs administered to patients are causing a lot of side effects. Hence, there's a lot of demand created in the world for drug loading carriers which increase drug resident time *in-vitro* or *in-vivo,* especially in the gastrointestinal tract and on the exterior part of the human body should be safe and non-toxic. The developments of alginates and alginate derivatives are discussed about controlled drug delivery, sustained drug delivery, and targeted drug delivery, etc.
