Development and optimization of ketoconazole oral strips by means of continuous hot-melt extrusion processing

Solubility of Ketoconazole (antifungal drug) in SC-CO2 for binary and ternary systems: measurements and empirical correlations

One of the main steps in choosing the drug nanoparticle production processes by supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO₂) is determining the solubility of the solid solute. For this purpose, the solubility of Ketoconazole (KTZ) in the SC-CO₂, binary system, as well as in the SC-CO₂-menthol (cosolvent), ternary system, was measured at 308–338 K and 12–30 MPa using the static analysis method. The KTZ solubility in the SC-CO₂ ranged between 0.20 × 10^–6 and 8.02 × 10^–5, while drug solubility in the SC-CO₂ with cosolvent varied from 1.2 × 10^–5 to 1.96 × 10^–4. This difference indicated the significant effect of menthol cosolvent on KTZ solubility in the SC-CO₂. Moreover, KTZ solubilities in the two systems were correlated by several empirical and semiempirical models. Among them, Sodeifian et al., Bian et al., MST, and Bartle et al. models can more accurately correlate experimental data for the binary system than other used models. Also, the Sodeifian and Sajadian model well fitted the solubility data of the ternary system with AARD% = 6.45, R_adj = 0.995.

Oral thin films as a remedy for noncompliance in pediatric and geriatric patients

Pediatric and geriatric patients experience swallowing difficulties for traditional oral dosage forms, such as tablets. Further, microbial contamination, chemical stability, unpleasant taste and swallowing large volumes of fluids have led to low therapeutic efficacy and patient noncompliance. The emergence of oral thin films has resulted in dramatic improvements in compliance and drug therapy outcomes in pediatric and geriatric patients. Oral thin films do not require water for administration, are readily hydrated upon contact with saliva, adhere to the mucosa and disintegrate ideally under 1 min. This article provides an overview of oral thin films, modern trends in their formulation and characterization, available commercial products, information to fill knowledge gaps and future potential and economic prospects of oral thin film technology, with emphasis on their use in the pediatric and geriatric patient groups.

Continuous manufacturing via hot-melt extrusion and scale up: regulatory matters

Currently, because globalization, the pharmaceutical industry is facing enormous challenges to comply with regulatory matters. Reduced patent life and overall decreased profitability of newly discovered drugs are also forcing the pharmaceutical industry to shorten the drug development time with maximum throughput. Therefore, continuous manufacturing (CM) processes via hot melt extrusion (HME) can be a promising alternative for achieving these goals. HME offers solvent-free green technology with a process that is easy to scale up. Moreover, CM provides better product quality assurance compared with batch processes, with fewer labor costs and shorter time to development. In this review, we primarily focus on various aspects of CM and the emerging application of HME to bridge the current manufacturing gap in pharmaceutical sphere.