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The development of solid dosage forms and manufacturing processes are governed by complex physical properties of the powder and the type of pharmaceutical unit operation the manufacturing processes employs. Suitable powder flow properties and compactability are crucial bulk level properties for tablet manufacturing by direct compression. It is also generally agreed that small scale powder flow measurements can be useful to predict large scale production failure. In this study, predictive multilinear regression models were effectively developed from critical material properties to estimate static powder flow parameters from particle size distribution data for a single component and for binary systems. A multilinear regression model, which was successfully developed for ibuprofen, also efficiently predicted the powder flow properties for a range of batches of two other active pharmaceutical ingredients processed by the same manufacturing route. The particle size distribution also affected the compactability of ibuprofen, and the scope of this work will be extended to the development of predictive multivariate models for compactability, in a similar manner to the approach successfully applied to flow properties., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Co-processing an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) with a low Tg excipient has been previously reported to be an effective strategy for preventing drug amorphisation on milling. This technique relies on the ability of the excipient to form a molecular dispersion with the amorphous API during the milling process. The presence of the excipient within the amorphous phase induces a reduction of the Tg. Hence, the molecular dispersion becomes less stable than the amorphous API alone and recrystallises upon milling. The objective of this study was to develop a screening method for the selection of suitable excipients to prevent amorphisation, based on two criteria: the Tg of the excipient and the solubility of the excipient in the amorphous API. The ability of the excipients to induce Tg reduction was first assessed by measuring the Tg of the amorphous composite by thermal analysis and comparing it with that of the pure API (griseofulvin). A predicted ability for mitigation of amorphisation upon milling was then deduced from these observations for each excipient and assessed against experimental results. The same excipients were then studied with regard to their expected solubility in another amorphous API (budesonide) by Hildebrand solubility parameter calculations in order to evaluate their capacity to form an amorphous composite with the drug. The predicted effects of the excipients on comilling were compared with the amorphous content of the processed API. The screening method as applied to both APIs showed good agreement with the experimental results and were shown to be efficient for the selection of the most appropriate excipient. This approach revealed that the two key parameters involved are the Tg of the excipient and the ability of the API to form an amorphous molecular dispersion with the excipients. This work confirms and completes our previously published results on the mitigation of the amorphisation by comilling with low Tg excipients and constitutes the first report of the use of a polymeric additive for this purpose., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Pharmaceutical applications which require knowledge of the solubility of a crystalline compound in an amorphous matrix are abundant in the literature. Several methods that allow the determination of such data have been reported, but so far have only been applicable to amorphous polymers above the glass transition of the resulting composites. The current work presents, for the first time, a reliable method for the determination of the solubility of crystalline pharmaceutical compounds in high and low molecular weight amorphous matrices at the glass transition and at room temperature (i.e. below the glass transition temperature), respectively. The solubilities of mannitol and indomethacin in polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) K15 and PVP K25, respectively were measured at different temperatures. Mixtures of undissolved crystalline solute and saturated amorphous phase were obtained by annealing at a given temperature. The solubility at this temperature was then obtained by measuring the melting enthalpy of the crystalline phase, plotting it as a function of composition and extrapolating to zero enthalpy. This new method yielded results in accordance with the predictions reported in the literature. The method was also adapted for the measurement of the solubility of crystalline low molecular weight excipients in amorphous active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The solubility of mannitol, glutaric acid and adipic acid in both indomethacin and sulfadimidine was experimentally determined and successfully compared with the difference between their respective calculated Hildebrand solubility parameters. As expected from the calculations, the dicarboxylic acids exhibited a high solubility in both amorphous indomethacin and sulfadimidine, whereas mannitol was almost insoluble in the same amorphous phases at room temperature. This work constitutes the first report of the methodology for determining an experimentally measured solubility for a low molecular weight crystalline solute in a low molecular weight amorphous matrix., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)