Pharmaceutical Technology Europe-11-01-2002

The security of documents in the pharmaceutical industry has become a critical issue since the advent of electronic data transfer. Companies in Europe must comply with 21 CFR Part 11 if they sell in the US. The regulations also require that secure, computer-generated, time-stamped audit trails are used to record the date and time of operator entries and actions that create, modify or delete electronic records. In particular, the record change must not obscure previously recorded information.

During the last few decades, advances in molecular biology have allowed the increasingly rapid sequencing of large portions of genomes. The plethora of information, resulting from programmes such as the Human Genome Project, has necessitated the careful storage, organization and indexing of sequence information. This, in turn, has led to the development of numerous sequence databases such as GenBank and EMBL. This article examines how an integrated approach to bioinformatics could help researchers align their work, share data and, ultimately, significantly increase productivity.

Consideration of the key process variable will define the ease with which coating processes can be transferred from development to production. This study investigates those factors influencing atomization from two spray guns and examines how development-scale procedures on interchangeable drum coating equipment compare with those typically used in a production environment.

The aim of this work was to investigate the compactibility, compressibility and drug release behaviour of different fractions of a commercially available ethyl cellulose.

Dry powder inhalers (DPIs) contain a powder which, when required, is discharged and inhaled. The therapeutic drug is manufactured in powder form as small particles a few micrometres in diameter. In many DPIs, the drug is mixed with much larger sugar crystals, such as lactose, and the smaller drug particles attach to these excipient particles, improving entrainment of the drug upon inhalation. This article examines how the application and combination of versatile processes such as milling, micronizing, sieving and air classification can be used to manufacture dedicated lactose products for practically every possible combination of active and excipient blend in DPIs.