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Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Pharmacology, grade: 5, University of Port Harcourt, language: English, abstract: The objective of the research work is to modify maize seed fibre. The work is aimed at deriving a hydrophilic polymer from the fibre obtained from maize seed and evaluating it as a binder in Metronidazole tablets. A destarched corn seed fibre is regarded as an agro-waste which could be converted to a very useful pharmaceutical excipient and employed in local drug production. The feasibility of this will go a long way to reduce the cost of drugs production in Nigeria and conserve foreign reserve. Crude corn seed fibre lack some important physico-technical properties of an ideal pharmaceutical excipient like flowability, compressibility. There is therefore the necessity to modify the fibre in order to improve its quality as pharmaceutical excipient. Pharmaceutical excipients are ingredients that are not the active drug substances of the pharmaceutical formulations, which have been properly assessed for safety and are added in a drug delivery system to either assist the processing of the drug delivery system during production, safeguard, support or improve stability, bioavailability or patient acceptability, identification or improve any other qualities of the general safety and efficiency of the drug delivery system during storage or use. Excipients are also called additives or adjuncts. Drugs are not always administered alone but usually formulated with the help of these additives into suitable dosage forms. Examples of these excipients includes the binding, lubricating, flavoring, sweetening, bulking agents among others. Excipients make up the largest constituents of any pharmaceutical dosage form and may be natural, semi-synthetic or synthetic in origin. About 75.0 percent of total drugs consumed in Nigeria are imported especially from Asian countries and only 25.0 percent are manufactured locally in Nigeria. The Nigerian pharmaceutical industries largely rely on foreign pharmaceutical excipients for their local drug production. A huge amount of the country's foreign exchange are spent on the importation of the active pharmaceutical ingredients and excipients. Africa produces about 6.5 percent of maize in the world annually and Nigeria is the largest maize producer in Africa with an annual production capacity of about 8 million tons.