Linked experimental and modelling approaches for tablet property predictions.

Recent years have seen the advent of Quality-by-Design (QbD) as a philosophy to ensure the quality, safety, and efficiency of pharmaceutical production. The key pharmaceutical processing methodology of Direct Compression to produce tablets is also the focus of some research. The traditional Design-of-Experiments and purely experimental approach to achieve such quality and process development goals can have significant time and resource requirements.

Biopharmaceutical Understanding of Excipient Variability on Drug Apparent Solubility Based on Drug Physicochemical Properties. Case Study: Superdisintegrants.

The presence of different excipient types/brands in solid oral dosage forms may affect product performance and drug bioavailability. Understanding the biopharmaceutical implications of superdisintegrant variability (changes in material properties), variation (changes in excipient amount) and interchangeability (use of different excipient types with the same intended functionality) in oral drug performance would be beneficial for the development of robust final dosage forms. The current study investigated the impact of superdisintegrants (sodium starch glycolate, croscarmellose sodium, crospovidone) on the apparent solubility of drugs with different physicochemical properties (drug ionisation, drug lipophilicity, drug aqueous solubility).

Bridging in vitro dissolution and in vivo exposure for acalabrutinib. Part II. A mechanistic PBPK model for IR formulation comparison, proton pump inhibitor drug interactions, and administration with acidic juices.

Acalabrutinib (Calquence®) 100 mg (bid) has received accelerated approval by FDA for the treatment of adult patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) who have received at least one prior therapy. Acalabrutinib is a substrate of PgP and CYP3A4, with a significant fraction of drug metabolized by first pass gut extraction and 25% absolute bioavailability. The absorption of acalabrutinib is affected by stomach pH, with lower pharmacokinetic exposure observed following co-administration with proton pump inhibitors.

Development of a Novel Continuous Filtration Unit for Pharmaceutical Process Development and Manufacturing.

The lack of a commercial laboratory, pilot and small manufacturing scale dead end continuous filtration and drying unit it is a significant gap in the development of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing processes for new active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). To move small-scale pharmaceutical isolation forward from traditional batch Nutsche filtration to continuous processing a continuous filter dryer prototype unit (CFD20) was developed in collaboration with Alconbury Weston Ltd. The performance of the prototype was evaluated by comparison with manual best practice exemplified using a modified Biotage VacMaster unit to gather data and process understanding for API filtration and washing.

The use of quasi-isothermal modulated temperature differential scanning calorimetry for the characterization of slow crystallization processes in lipid-based solid self-emulsifying systems.

Purpose: Slow or incomplete crystallization may be a significant manufacturing issue for solid lipid-based dosage forms, yet little information is available on this phenomenon. In this investigation we suggest a novel means by which slow solidification may be monitored in Gelucire 44/14 using quasi-isothermal modulated temperature DSC (QiMTDSC).

Methods: Conventional linear heating and cooling DSC methods were employed, along with hot stage microscopy (HSM), for basic thermal profiling of Gelucire 44/14.

Construction of drug-polymer thermodynamic phase diagrams using Flory-Huggins interaction theory: identifying the relevance of temperature and drug weight fraction to phase separation within solid dispersions.

Amorphous drug-polymer solid dispersions have the potential to enhance the dissolution performance and thus bioavailability of BCS class II drug compounds. The principle drawback of this approach is the limited physical stability of amorphous drug within the dispersion. Accurate determination of the solubility and miscibility of drug in the polymer matrix is the key to the successful design and development of such systems.