Structure-property relationships of solids in pharmaceutical processing

Abstract

Pharmaceutical development and manufacturing of solid dosage forms is witnessing a seismic shift in the recent years. In contrast to the earlier days when drug development was empirical, now there is a significant emphasis on a more scientific and structured development process, primarily driven by the Quality-by-Design (QbD) initiatives of US Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA). Central to such an approach is the enhanced understanding of solid materials using the concept of Materials Science Tetrahedron (MST) that probes the interplay between four elements, viz., the structure, properties, processing, and performance of materials. In this thesis work, we have investigated the relationships between the structure and those properties of pharmaceutical solids that influence their processing behavior. In all cases, we have used material-sparing approaches to facilitate property assessment using very small sample size of materials, which is a pre-requisite in the early stages of drug development when the availability of materials, drugs in particular, is limited. The influence of solid structure, either at the molecular or bulk powder levels, on crystal plasticity and powder compaction, powder flow, and solid-state amorphization during milling, has been investigated in this study. Through such a systematic evaluation, we have captured the involvement of structure-property correlations within a wide spectrum of relevant processing behaviors of pharmaceutical solids. Such a holistic analysis will be beneficial for addressing both regulatory and scientific issues in drug development.