#smartgels

  Transforming substances from liquids into gels plays an important role across many industries, including cosmetics, medicine, and energy. But the transformation process, called gelation, where manufacturers add chemical thickeners and either heat or cool the fluids to make them more viscous or elastic, is expensive and energy demanding. Take shampoo, for example. Without gelation, the contents of the shampoo bottle would be thin and watery. Instead of squirting a gooey dollop into the palm of your hand, the shampoo would rush between your fingers and escape down the drain before you could slather it on your head.

Its high time that we concerned about an ever increasing pollution: Drug Pollution-The millions of doses of drugs that we swallow annually to combat cancer, pain,depression and other ailments do not disappear harmlessly into our digestive systems, but instead make their way back into the environment where they may contaminate drinking water and pose a threat to aquatic wildlife. With this in mind, we tried to determine how efficiently a biocompatible pH sensitive gel synthesized can reduce the overdose and help the nature’s self-cleansing processes and thus eliminating these man-made pollutants. Being able to reduce the overdose of drugs is important because many medicines consumed are not rendered biologically harmless when they pass through the body. Conventional sewage treatment systems may not remove them, and unused drugs may be flushed down the toilet or thrown into the trash, ultimately ending up in groundwater or surface water, where they may affect aquatic life and drinking water quality. Hydro gel films of gelatin with sodium alginate in SDS micelle were prepared. They demonstrated excellent pH sensitivity and were selected for the study of release profiles of a model drug, Ciprofloxacin hydrochloride. The films were characterized by FTIR, XRD, SEM analysis and biological studies (in vivo and in vitro analysis) to assess their toxicity.

Dr Jinu George