M

ore and more fre­quently, phar­ma­cists use pellet-based for­mu­la­tions instead of mono­lithic tablets or powder cap­sules. There are many good rea­sons for this solid oral admin­is­tra­tion form. Among others, this method is char­ac­ter­ized by dust-free pro­cessing, sta­bility, good dosing and mixing capa­bility, excel­lent flow prop­er­ties as well as the pos­si­bility to apply layers. Coating allows taste masking, the delayed and con­trolled release of active sub­stances, or simply com­fort­able swallowing.

Filled into the XStraw^® drinking straw, the drug glob­ules are dis­persed and trans­ported when suc­tion is applied while drinking – a method which is espe­cially suited for chil­dren and the elderly. The prac­tical single-dose pack­aging into sachets is also gaining in impor­tance. The four­side sealed pouch machine PPH by Harro Höfliger pro­duces and fills the flat pouches with very small pellet quan­ti­ties from 10 mg upwards. With the Modu‑C series cap­sule filling machines, dosing of spe­cific quan­ti­ties of pel­lets into hard cap­sules – also in any com­bi­na­tion with powder, tablets or micro-tablets – is accom­plished using pellet sta­tions on flex­ible and change­able trolleys.

Philippe Tschopp

“The optimum inter­ac­tion between product, device and machine exper­tise – that is what Excel­lence United’s cus­tomers ben­efit from.“Philippe Tschopp, Head of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Phar­ma­ceu­tical Ser­vices, Glatt

Depending on the field of appli­ca­tion and the require­ments for pellet type and size, active sub­stance loading and the quan­ti­ties to be pro­duced, dif­ferent man­u­fac­turing processes are used for the mul­ti­fac­eted gran­ules. For decades, Glatt has been the market leader in machine engi­neering for the refining and pro­cessing of solids in powder form for the phar­ma­ceu­tical, fine chem­ical and food indus­tries.  For many years they have been dealing with multi-par­tic­u­late drugs such as gran­ules and their spe­cially shaped pel­lets and micro-pel­lets. As a pio­neer in flu­idized bed tech­nology, the Excel­lence United partner offers machines for all common pro­duc­tion processes, both in batch and in con­tin­uous operation.

One single system, four pro­cessing options: The GPCG 2 Lab­System offers drying, gran­u­lating, coating, and pelletizing.

Pre­cise dosing of pel­lets into the XStraw^® with tech­nology from Harro Höfliger.

Pellet-based for­mu­la­tions sorce with dust-free pro­cessing, sta­bility, good dosing and mixing capa­bility, excel­lent flow prop­er­ties as well as the pos­si­bility to apply layers.

In the XStraw^® drinking straw, the drug glob­ules are dis­persed and trans­ported when suc­tion is applied while drinking – a method which is espe­cially suited for chil­dren and the elderly.

The extru­sion of moist powder mass is one of their tra­di­tional tech­nolo­gies. The pel­lets with an average size of 500 to 2,000 microm­e­ters are then rounded in the sub­se­quent spher­onizing process. During lay­ering, liquid or powder active sub­stances are applied to the starter pel­lets in very even layers, usu­ally fol­lowed by func­tional coating.

Direct pel­leting from pow­dery active ingre­di­ents or aux­il­iary mate­rials enables the pro­duc­tion of very evenly shaped pel­lets. The MikroPx^® tech­nology, a con­tin­uous flu­idized bed agglom­er­a­tion process, pro­duces highly dosed micro-pel­lets in a size of 100 to 400 microm­e­ters with a narrow par­ticle size dis­tri­b­u­tion and active ingre­dient con­tents of up to 95 per­cent. They are par­tic­u­larly easy to swallow and ide­ally suited for an oral drug delivery device such as the XStraw^® drinking straw – a suc­cessful example of the coop­er­a­tion between the Excel­lence United partners.

Down­load this article as PDF file

Photos: Glatt Group, Helmar Lünig