a b s t r a c t New dextrin hydrogels with degrees of substitution (DS) from ca. 10% (DS 10) to 70% (DS 70) were pre-pared by radical polymerization of aqueous solutions of vinylacrylate (VA)-derivatized dextrin. A preli-minary analysis on the potential of these hydrogels for the controlled release of bioactive molecules was carried out. The protein (bovine serum albumin) diffusion coefficients on the hydrogels were calcu-lated using the lag-time analysis. Values in range 10 À7 cm 2 /s were obtained for DS 20 and DS 40 and a smaller value of 10 À8 cm 2 /s arised upon DS increasing to 70%, revealing the dependence of the diffusivity on the crosslinking density. The release of BSA from dextrin-VA hydrogels, in the presence of amyloglu-cosidase was shown to be mainly dependent on the diffusion and, to a smaller extent, on the degradation kinetics. The protein release can be tailored from days to months by varying the DS.