Making science work

Target groups

This short course is intended to provide a useful background on contemporary solid state and solution characterization of API’s as well as to provide a framework for translating these data into useful formulations. The course is designed to be useful to both scientists new to the field as well as the experienced pharmaceutical researcher with an eye towards the state of the art and future direction.

Objective

Preformulation is an essential step in the pharmaceutical development of an API. It is the process by which candidate drugs are characterized with respect to the appropriateness to be formulated and processed to a useful dosage form. During this phase of the development, information about the physicochemical properties (e.g., solubility, ionization behavior, solid state properties,…), biopharmaceutical properties (e.g., permeability through bio-membranes) and stability profile (physical, chemical, compatibility with excipients, etc.) of the drug candidate is collected. This information guides the formulation scientist as it will dictate many of the possible formulation and processing approaches.