“…Polysaccharides, generally biocompatible, cross-linked with sodium trimetaphosphate (STMP), a non-toxic cyclic triphosphate, have led to hydrogels with many applications such as tissue engineering (Abed et al, 2011;Autissier, Letourneur, & Le Visage, 2007;Autissier, Visage, Pouzet, Chaubet, & Letourneur, 2010;Shi, Le Visage, & Chew, 2011), loading and delivering drug (Bejenariu, Popa, Dulong, Picton, & Le Cerf, 2009;Shalviri, Liu, Abdekhodaie, & Wu, 2010) or siRNA (San Juan et al, 2009), food thickeners (Khondkar, Tester, Hudson, Karkalas, & Morrow, 2007;Le Bail, Morin, & Marchessault, 1999;Sang, Prakash, & Seib, 2007;Sang, Seib, Herrera, Prakash, & Shi, 2010;Woo & Seib, 1997) as STMP is one of the few cross-linkers authorized in foodstuff.…”