International Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, 2017, 7, 1, 04-09.
DOI: 10.4103/jphi.JPHI_36_16
Published: March 2017
Type: Review Article
Authors:
Arindam Chatterjee
Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Jaipur National University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.
Madan Mohan Gupta
Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Jaipur National University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India; Department of Pharmaceutics, Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Formulation Design and Development, School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medical Sciences, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies.
Birendra Srivastava
Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Jaipur National University, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.
ABSTRACT
Tablets have been choice of manufacturers over the years due to their comparatively low cost of manufacturing, packaging, shipping and ease of administration; also have better stability and can be considered virtually tamper proof. A major challenge in formulation development of the tablets extends from lower solubility of the active agent to the elaborated manufacturing procedures for obtaining a compressible granular material. Moreover, the validation and documentation increases, as the numbers of steps increases for an industrially acceptable granulation process. Spherical crystallization (SC) is a promising technique, which encompass the crystallization, agglomeration and spheronization phenomenon in a single step. Initially, two methods, spherical agglomeration and emulsion solvent diffusion, were suggested to get a desired result. Later on, the introduction of modified methods such as crystallo-co-agglomeration, ammonia diffusion system and neutralization techniques overcame the limitations of the older techniques. Under controlled conditions such as solvent composition, mixing rate and temperature, spherical dense agglomerates cluster from particles. Application of the SC technique includes production of compacted spherical particles of drug having improved uniformity in shape and size of particles, good bulk density, better flow properties as well as better solubility so SC when used on commercial scale will bring down the production costs of pharmaceutical tablet and will increase revenue for the pharmaceutical industries in the competitive market. This review summarizes the technologies available for SC and also suggests the parameters for evaluation of a viable product.
Keywords: Agglomeration, Compressibility, Granulation, Powder flow, Solubility enhancement, Spherical crystallization .