摘要：Objective:Oral slow and sustained release drug delivery system can release their drug content with a controlled manner,producing a desirable blood serum level,reduction in drug toxicity and improving the patient compliance by prolonging dosing *** major drawback of orally administered drug like diltiazem as a calcium channel blocker for the treatment of angina pectoris,arrhythmia and *** has higher aqueous solubility and shorter elimination ***:To overcome these drawbacks associated with diltiazem,an attempt has been made to develop a sustained release dosage form of diltiazem embedded alginate microbeads by ionotropic gelation technique employing various concentrations of polymer and keeping the drug concentration ***:The beads were characterized for its particle size,drug content and in vitro release studies. The results revealed that the surface adhering drug was found to release immediately and a steady state of release was obtained up to 12 h from all the *** results indicated there was an inverse relationship between the concentration of alginate and drug *** drug release was found to follow non-fickian diffusion obeying first order ***:The developed alginate microbeads offered a sustained release of diltiazem. Hence,the formulated microbeads were found to be potential,cost effective,possess satisfactory in vitro release studies.