The pharmaceutical manufacturing industry stands at a critical point, and it must address environmental limitations, while medical researchers develop new medical treatments. Green biomaterials from marine sources can be used as an environmentally-friendly and sustainable substitute to conventional excipients. Such renewable scaffolds include polysaccharides, collagenous proteins, and bioactive lipid assemblies that provide a viable multi-functional alternative. This review integrates the relationships between molecular structure and functionality with green extraction technologies, formulation design strategies, and sustainability issues to establish the translational potential of marine excipients. Some of the important materials that have been considered are alginate (Laminaria, Macrocystis), carrageenan (Kappaphycus alvarezii, Eucheuma spp.), chitosan (crustacean-derived), fucoidan (brown seaweeds), agar (Gracilaria spp.), marine collagen (fish skin and scales), and omega-3-rich krill phospholipids. Molecular determinants of drug delivery performance in the form of the mannuronic/guluronic acid (M/G) ratio in alginate, degree of deacetylation (DDA) in chitosan, sulfation density in fucoidan, 3,6-anhydro-galactose content in carrageenan, and amphiphilic phospholipid organization in marine lipids govern it. Scalable biorefinery schemes also enable us to deal with life-cycle sustainability, variability of raw materials, and standardization by regulatory requirements. Sea excipients become re-positioned as vehicles of accuracy and ecological sustainability, as constructs of environmentally-friendly pharmaceutical engineering.
Foudah et al. (2026) studied this question.