Modeling and morphological characterization of plant-based gelatin with cellulose for drug and food coatings and shelf-life

Physical properties of edible and pharmaceutical coating formulations are on the rise for various applications such as tablet and vaccine coating (for easy swallowing, drug delivery, avoid sub-zero refrigeration, and time-controlled release rate), food additives (thickening, preserve freshness in grocery product, personnel care products), shelf life and many other applications including plasma substitute [1- 10,13-16]. We will investigate the effect of concentration of plant-based gelatin (as we know that many plants survive in sub-zero conditions), cellulose, and additives such as sebacic acid, citric acid, glycerol (as plasticizer of bacterial cellulose, to increase flexibility, decrease viscosity and/or friction), which improved the properties as described above including shelf life, they are characterized by some of the spectroscopic (rheology, DMA, TGA) methods [1,5,8-14]. Measured data is examined in order to maximize the palatable coating thickness, low temperature requirement, and shelf life such as we are experiencing now in the case of covid-19 vaccine storage. Complexation of coating formulations having critical compactness, viscosity, viscoelasticity, surface tension, and density variations with various gelatin concentration in cellulose would be an added advantage for many pharmaceutical applications to preserve the integrity of the sample for better usage. The increase of gelatin concentration showed an increase on the moduli and this trend continued with the addition of glycerol. The gelatin solutions underwent a phase transition from an elastic material to a viscous material. With the increase of concentration of gelatin and the addition of glycerol, it increased the temperature of the phase transitions. The addition of strawberry DNA did not affect the viscoelastic properties of the hydrogels and shows potential to be used in drug delivery systems.