The mechanochemical synthesis of cocrystals has been introduced as a promising approach of formulating poorly water-soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). In this study, hot-melt extrusion (HME) as a continuous process and grinding and ball milling as batch processes were employed to explore the feasibility of cocrystallization. Ciprofloxacin (CIP) and isonicotinic acid (INCA) were selected as the model API and coformer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe application of in-line Raman spectroscopy to monitor the formation of a 1:1 cocrystal of ibuprofen (IBU) as a BCS class II drug and nicotinamide as coformer using hot-melt extrusion (HME) was investigated. The process was monitored over different experimental conditions inserting the Raman probe before the extruder die. Partial least square (PLS) was applied as a robust chemometric technique to build predictive models at different levels of chemometric by dividing the experimental data set into calibration and validation subsets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiscovery of novel cocrystal systems and improvement of their physicochemical properties dominates the current literature on cocrystals yet the required end-product formulation is rarely addressed. Drug product manufacturing includes complex API solid state processing steps such as milling, granulation, and tableting. These all require high mechanical stress which can lead to solid-state phase transformations into polymorphs and solvates, or lead to dissociation of cocrystals into their individual components.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMannitol infusion is commonly used in the treatment of intracranial hypertension following traumatic brain injury. It has long been known to have stability issues, specifically, mannitol recrystallises from solutions greater than 10% / in ambient conditions. This can happen at any time, whether on the pharmacy shelf or during a medical procedure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this work a cocrystal of Theophylline and 4Aminobenzoic acid was successfully produced and formulated using a hydrophilic binder with a novel continuous melt granulation approach. This melt granulation was followed with direct compression to generate oral solid dosage forms. The study revealed that the processing temperature, molecular weight of the binder and binder concentration were the most effective parameters for the production and formulation of high purity cocrystals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmaceutical cocrystals have gained increasing interest due to their potential to modify the physicochemical properties of drugs. Herein, a 1:1 cocrystal of ibuprofen (IBU) as a BCS class II active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and nicotinamide as coformer was produced using a hot-melt extrusion (HME) process. The effect of process parameters such as barrel temperature and screw speed were studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo-dimensional population balance model (PBM) is developed in order to model pharmaceutical granules formation in a twin-screw wet granulator. Granule size and liquid content are considered as internal coordinates, while axial length of granulator is considered as external coordinate. Two types of initial liquid distribution are considered for the model development, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this work, the transfer of oral solid dosage forms, currently manufactured via wet granulation, to a continuous direct compression process was considered. Two main challenges were addressed: (1) a poorly flowing API (Canagliflozin) and (2) high drug loading (51 wt%). A scientific approach was utilised for formulation development, targeting flow and compaction behaviour suitable for manufacturing scale.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe field of pharmaceutical cocrystals has reached a tipping point, particularly because cocrystals can improve the physicochemical properties of drugs without compromising their therapeutic benefit. Accounts of cocrystal investigations in the literature started in earnest in 2003 and patent applications soon followed. The frequency of both has steadily accelerated, demonstrating an enhanced understanding of the design, characterisation, and manufacture of cocrystals and heightened interest from industry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrends Pharmacol Sci
December 2018
Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are most commonly formulated and delivered to patients in the solid state. Recently, an alternative API solid-state form, namely the pharmaceutical cocrystal, has witnessed increasing academic and industrial interest due to its potential to deliver bespoke physical properties in the pharmaceutical drug product. This interest has been supported by advances in cocrystal discovery, development, and approval, enabled primarily by a supportive new FDA guidance in February 2018.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPatient compliance will soon become one of the most critical challenges in modern healthcare. Due in part to our aging population, the rise in the number of chronic conditions will cause increasing stress on global healthcare systems, magnifying current problems. The solutions employed to improve compliance have failed to deliver and the medical community have turned to Multidrug Formulations (MDFs), to provide an answer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFused deposition modelling (FDM) is the most commonly investigated 3D printing technology for the manufacture of personalized medicines, however, the high temperatures used in the process limit its wider application. The objective of this study was to print low-melting and thermolabile drugs by reducing the FDM printing temperature. Two immediate release polymers, Kollidon VA64 and Kollidon 12PF were investigated as potential candidates for low-temperature FDM printing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDrop-on-demand inkjet printing is a potential enabling technology both for continuous manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and for personalized medicine, but its use is often restricted to low-viscosity solutions and nano-suspensions. In the present study, a robust electromagnetic (valvejet) inkjet technology has been successfully applied to deposit prototype dosage forms from solutions with a wide range of viscosities, and from suspensions with particle sizes exceeding 2 μm. A detailed solid-state study of paracetamol, printed from a solution ink on hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), revealed that the morphology of the substrate and its chemical interactions can have a considerable influence on polymorphic selectivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComputational modelling of twin-screw granulation was conducted by using an artificial neural network (ANN) approach. Various ANN configurations were considered with changing hidden layers, nodes and activation functions to determine the optimum model for the prediction of the process. The neural networks were trained using experimental data obtained for granulation of pure microcrystalline cellulose using a 12mm twin-screw extruder.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMixer torque rheometry (MTR) was evaluated as a pre-production (pre-formulation and optimization) tool for predicting ideal liquid-to-solid ratios (L/S) for extrusion-spheronisation of a wide range of APIs using 10g formulations. APIs of low, medium and high solubility were formulated at low and high loadings (15 and 40% w/w, respectively) with PVP as binder (5%) and MCC as the major excipient. L/S corresponding to the maximum torque produced during wet massing in the MTR, L/S, was 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiffraction and spectroscopic methods were evaluated for quantitative analysis of binary powder mixtures of FII(6.403) and FIII(6.525) piracetam.
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