Modification of Glucomannan as an Excipient: History
Please note this is an old version of this entry, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Subjects: Polymer Science

Glucomannan (GM)—a polysaccharide generally extracted from the tuber of Amorphophallus konjac—has great potential as a filler–binder in direct compression, disintegrant in tablets, or gelling agent due to its strong hydrophilicity and extremely high viscosity. However, it has poor water resistance and low mechanical strength when used as an excipient in solid form. Several physical and chemical modifications have been carried out to improve these drawbacks. Chemical modification affects the characteristics of GM based on the DS. Carboxymethylation improves GM functionality by modifying its solubility and viscosity, which in turn allows it to bind water more efficiently and thus improve its elongation and gel homogeneity. Meanwhile, physical modification enhances functionality through combination with other excipients to improve mechanical properties and modify swelling ability and drug release from the matrix. This review discusses extraction of GM and its modification to enhance its applicability as an excipient in solid form. Modified GM is a novel excipient applicable in the pharmaceutical industry for direct compression, as a tablet disintegrant, a film-forming agent, and for encapsulation of macromolecular compounds or drug carriers for controlled release.

  • glucomannan
  • chemical modification
  • physical modification
  • excipient

1. Introduction

Solid dosage of drugs is most preferable because it provides accurate dosage and is more stable than other forms [1]. Common uses include uncoated and film-coated tablets and film. Production requires polymers to enable pharmaceutical products to optimally control drug release [2,3] and to improve physicochemical properties [4,5]. Natural polymers such as glucomannan (GM) have attracted extensive attention due to their biodegradability, nontoxicity, harmlessness, and biocompatibility.
Glucomannan (GM) is a polysaccharide typically extracted from Amorphophallus oncophyllus [6] and Amorphophallus muerelli Blume [7]. It has the ability to thicken and form a gel; hence, this compound is widely used in various industries, including the pharmaceutical industry as a binder [8], thickener [9], gelling agent [10], film former [11], coating material for tablets [12,13], emulsifier [14], and stabilizer [15].
As a natural polymer, GM has properties that are superior to other polysaccharides when used as excipients for solid preparations, especially in tablet production. GM could be the excipient of choice for direct compression—the most efficient tablet manufacturing method—because it has desirable free-flowing and compressibility behavior [16,17,18]. GM is also reported as a widely used coating material and stabilizer in the pharmaceutical industry due to its gelling properties and particular rheological properties [11,13,19].
Native GM has several disadvantages for pharmaceutical applications, such as extremely high viscosity and low mechanical strength [20,21]. In addition, GM’s high-water absorption index causes poor water resistance and limits some potential applications [14,22]. However, these shortcomings of native GM could be overcome through chemical or physical modification to enhance its structural and functional quality.
Chemical modification involves the substitution of functional groups in GM’s structure including esterification and etherification and elongation of the molecular chain through the formation of crosslinks and encapsulation. Depending on the degree of substitution (DS), these modifications alter several characteristic of GM, such as homogeneous film formation [11], increased tensile strength [15], improved thermal stability [15], and sustained release [23].
GM can be physically modified to improve functionality without undergoing chemical changes. Physical modifications involve mixing native GM with other excipients through processes involving milling [24], moisture [25], temperature [26], pressure [27], radiation [28,29], etc. Physical modifications cause variations to particle size, shape, surface properties, porosity, density, and to functional properties such as swelling capacity and gelation ability. These modifications directly influence disintegration and mechanical properties when used as an excipient in solid form.

2. Polysaccharides from Different Sources

2.1. Natural Polysaccharides

Natural polysaccharides can be derived from four main sources: algae, plants, animals, and microorganisms (Figure 2). Demand for polysaccharides from natural origins is tremendously because they provide several benefits, including natural abundance, ease of isolation, and ability to be chemically modified in order to fit technological demand. Furthermore, these polymers may be enzymatically hydrolyzed, and they produce a noncarcinogenic, degradable product [30,31].
Figure 2. Four main sources of natural polysaccharides.
Natural polysaccharides consist of many monosaccharide residues joined by O-glycosidic bonds. When hydrolyzed, polysaccharides produce simple sugars such as glucose, galactose, mannose, arabinose, xylose, uronic acid, etc. Among numerous sources of naturally occurring substances, plants are considered a potentially renewable resource since they can provide a certain amount of natural polymers of plant origin [32,33]. Figure 3 shows some essential steps in the isolation and purification of polysaccharides from plants.
Figure 3. Isolation and purification of polysaccharides from plants.

2.2. Petrochemical Synthesis

Structurally, polysaccharides are composed of several monosaccharides joined together by O-glycosidic linkages. O-glycosidic linkages are formed by dehydration of the hemiacetal hydroxyl group of one sugar (a glycosyl donor) with a hydroxyl group on the anomeric carbon of another sugar (a glycosyl acceptor). Due to the presence of multiple hydroxyl groups, one glycosyl acceptor residue can be connected to more than one glycosyl donor via different O-glycosidic linkages. Consequently, polysaccharides may be linear or branched, and branching may occur at different positions of sugar units in the polysaccharide backbone with different branching densities [34,35]. Generally, three methods are used to synthesize polysaccharides: (1) stepwise glycosylation [36,37]; (2) condensation polymerization [38]; and (3) ring opening polymerization [39,40].

3. Structure and Physicochemical Properties of GM

GM is a natural heteropolysaccharide with a linear chain consisting of D-glucose and/or D-mannose in various proportions linked by β-1,4 glycosidic bonds. It also has multiple branching at β-1,3 glycosidic bonds to mannose units as shown in Figure 4 [41].
Figure 4. Structure of glucomannan.
The molecular weight varies from 200,000 to 2,000,000 Daltons, giving it incredibly higher viscosity than any known dietary fiber such as guar or locust bean gum [42,43]. When GM sol concentration is below 0.55%, it is only slightly affected by shear rate, indicating Newtonian fluid flow characteristics. However, at higher concentrations, shear rate can affect viscosity, leading to shear thinning and indicating non-Newtonian pseudoplasticity [44]. Based on previous reports, the viscosity of konjac glucomannan solution (1.0 g/100 g) can reach ~30,000 cps [45].
GM is a hydrophilic polymer due to the abundance of hydroxyl and carbonyl groups in its molecular chain. The hydrogen bonds between each molecule affect its solubility; hence, the stronger the bonds, the lower the solubility in water. In contrast, low acetyl group branching (5–10% at the C-6 position, i.e., one branch per approximately 19 sugar residues) reduces hydrogen bonding, thereby increasing solubility; this causes high water absorption of 105.4 g/g (water/GM) [46]. Water absorption is also affected by granule size and surface morphology—a reduction in particle size will increase surface wrinkle density, which culminates in higher hydration rates [47].
The formation of gel is by hydration of water; this can be accelerated by heating and vigorous stirring. GM also forms synergistic gels in a thermally reversible reaction with other polysaccharides, such as xanthan gum [48], κ-carrageenan [49], and gum tragacanth [50], which increase the mechanical strength and decrease syneresis. This is presumably due to agglomeration or physical entanglement and dynamic hydrogen bonds with other polysaccharides [48,49,50].
In recent years, GM has attracted special attention from researchers and the food industry due to its bioactive, biodegradable, and hydrophilicity properties. This high-molecular-weight polymer is known as a hydrocolloid and interacts strongly with water [51]. Hydrocolloids are used in the food industry because of their thickening, gelling, stabilizing, texture-modifying, and film-forming properties.

4. Extraction Optimization

For extraction, the organic solvents usually used to obtain GM from flour are hot water [52], ethanol [7], or isopropanol sol [53]. As the majority of the glucomannan is present in the cell walls (intracellular polysaccharides) of higher plants, extraction begins with crushing plants to release intracellular polysaccharides. Furthermore, plant cell walls are mainly enclosed by lipids, which are removed by organic solvents, allowing extraction of glucomannan. An illustration of GM’s separation from impurities is depicted in Figure 5. The flour swells in organic solvents, and the aqueous part dissolves impurities trapped in the konjac particle, such as soluble sugars and partial proteins. During heating, gelatinization occurs, which irreversibly dissolves the starch in water, while ash is simultaneously removed with increasing temperature. Therefore, heat affects GM purity, while purified products are precipitated in the presence of an antisolvent [54].
Figure 5. Separation of GM from impurities.
Among other techniques, extraction by ethanol precipitation is the most effective method to obtain GM; this is because its huge particles are difficult to destroy, and the incredibly tough shape is soluble in water but not in ethanol. Based on these characteristics, Yanuriati et al. found an easier and faster method to isolate GM from Amorphophallus by repeated milling of the fresh tuber slices using ethanol, followed by filtration without further purification. The results showed exceptionally high purity (90.98%), viscosity (27.940 cps), and transparency (57.74%), and significantly reduced ash and protein concentrations without starch content [7]. Furthermore, several studies used ethanol–water solutions in different concentration gradients to control the solubility of GM [55,56]. Isopropanol works excellently to remove impurities, including starch and carotene [53], while ethanol is also effective for obtaining GM but does not dissolve carotene thoroughly.
Previous statistical studies applying response surface methodology (RSM) proposed that precipitation efficiency is correlated to several factors, namely, harvest time [7], processing temperature [53,54], and solvent concentration [53,57]. First, the best harvest time to get GM from plants such as Amorphophallus muelleri tubers is during dormancy. Plant dormancy is a period of arrested growth. Because GM is one of the energy sources for leaf growth, during dormancy it is not used for metabolic processes and accumulates in the tubers [58]. Second, temperature correlates positively with GM content according to Xu et al., who reported an optimum temperature of 68 °C using 40% ethanol increased purity from 74.13% to 90.63% [53], while temperatures > 78 °C are not recommended because they are higher than GM’s exothermic transition temperature and disrupt the molecular chain [54]. Third, the optimum concentration of ethanol solvent is 50%; this is because it is difficult to remove water-soluble impurities from the flour with concentrated ethanol. Meanwhile, in diluted ethanol, more water is absorbed, which leads to greater swelling, making it difficult to obtain the GM [53].
Several other sources of GM apart from Amorphophallus are shown in Table 1 below.
Table 1. Sources and extraction processes of GM from different crops.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/polym14132550

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