Paper Number
PF13 

Session
Applied Rheology for Pharmaceuticals, Food and Consumer Products

Title
Continuous embedded droplet printing for improved pharmaceutical drug powder rheology

Presentation Date and Time
October 13, 2022 (Thursday) 11:15

Track / Room
Track 2 / Mayfair

Authors (Click on name to view author profile)

  1. Nelson, Arif Z. (Singapore Institute of Technology, Food Chemical and Biotechnology Cluster)
  2. Xie, Jiaxun (National University of Singapore, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
  3. Ng, Denise (Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology)
  4. Khan, Saif A. (National University of Singapore, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)
  5. Doyle, Patrick S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering)

Author and Affiliation Lines (in printed abstract book)
Arif Z. Nelson1, Jiaxun Xie2, Denise Ng3, Saif A. Khan2 and Patrick S. Doyle4
1Food Chemical and Biotechnology Cluster, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore 138683, Singapore; 2Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore; 3Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Singapore 138602, Singapore; 4Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139

Speaker / Presenter 
Nelson, Arif Z.

Keywords
additive manufacturing; consumer products; jammed systems; pharmaceuticals

Text of Abstract
Poor powder rheology is a persistent issue in pharmaceutical manufacturing, particularly for oral solid dosage forms. Typical manufacturing methods of active pharmaceutical ingredient particles often struggle to produce powders with favorable downstream properties including flowability and tabletability. Embedded droplet printing in yield-stress fluids is an emerging technique that has been demonstrated to provide a near-ideal environment for performing sensitive processes like pharmaceutical crystallization [1], but until recently was limited to small non-continuous, batch processes.

Here we present a platform for continuous production of embedded droplets, greatly expanding the utility of the method [2]. Applying this platform to spherical crystallization of pharmaceutical particles, we easily produce gram-scale amounts of drug powder which allows for quantitative characterization of the bulk powder rheology and comparison with conventionally synthesized particles. The results indicate how droplet-based processes may be implemented to control and improve solid dosage form manufacturing. By establishing the operating space for this type of embedded droplet platform, we provide a guide for how similar systems may be engineered to enable precise, rapid, customized, and distributed manufacturing of drug particles with superior downstream properties.

[1] Nelson, Arif Z., Kundukad, B., Wong, W. K., Khan, S. A., & Doyle, P. S. (2020). Embedded droplet printing in yield-stress fluids. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Mar 2020, 117 (11) 5671-5679.
[2] Nelson, Arif Z., Xie, J., Khan, S. A., & Doyle, P. S. (2021). Continuous embedded droplet printing in yield-stress fluids for pharmaceutical drug particle synthesis. Advanced Materials Technologies, 6 (4), 2001245.