The Rise of Academic/Industry Collaboration in Amorphous Material Studies

July 1, 2011 - PRLog -- Pharma IQ: We're delighted to have you here and we look forward to what you have to say. Firstly, using amorphous pharmaceutical materials is considered to be an effective way of improving necessary drug properties. What are the important factors to consider when formulated an amorphous substance and why?

M Descamps: Mainly, an amorphous state is an interesting formulation opportunity for poorly soluble drugs. That means when solubility is very limited in the crystalline state. So if you formulate in the amorphous solid state, which means glassy state, the solubility can be much higher. The problem, the drawback, is that glasses are intrinsically not stable state. They are prone to age, to re-crystallise, and that cannot be avoided. So the nature of the glassy pharmaceuticals depends on the sample history of the right of quenching, of drying, of shearing, as is the case when you prepare amorphous compounds by spray drying, by extrusion, etc. So the hue is to manipulate the glassy state to make it as stable as possible physically but also chemically while keeping solubility as high as possible. It is necessary, most often, to formulate HPI with excipients to increase the TG, for example.

The problem of solubility of HPI in polymer is a fundamental question.

So the factors which must be considered are those which have an impact on this stability. The main factor to consider is the molecular mobility because the structure does not change as the glass transitions. It is not really a structure problem but a mobility problem.

Glasses are classified according to the mobility properties. Mobility both above and below the glass transitions, and the position of the glass transition temperature is a direct signature of the mobility. Consequently the thermodynamics are very important also to consider because very recent fundamental research has shown that there are possible connections between thermodynamic and stability and the evolution of the mobility. It is thus necessary to use several complementary techniques to probe relaxation, to probe spectroscopy, calorimetry, and also structure, of course, to check the degree of homogeneity, for example, or to catch nucleation. It is also very important to capture the value of TG. It is what I can say at the moment on this problem of important factors to consider.

Pharma IQ: Thanks very much, Marc. That was a great summary. You have collaborated on projects with several large pharmaceutical companies in the past. Do you consider that industry in academic collaborations are becoming more commonplace, and does this represent a new trend in pharmaceutical R&D?

For the mp3 and transcript in full please click here: http://www.pharmaamorphous.com/Event.aspx?id=508468&utm_c...


Marc Descamps is among the experts who will be speaking at the Amorphous Pharmaceutical Materials 2011, due to take place from 27th – 28th September, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. For information please visit the website www.pharmaamorphous.com/ or contact the IQPC enquiries team on enquire@iqpc.co.uk or call +44 (0) 207 368 9373.