US EPA

3010577 

Journal Article 

Review 

Advantages and challenges of the spray-drying technology for the production of pure drug particles and drug-loaded polymeric carriers 

Sosnik, A; Seremeta, KP 

2015 

Yes 

Advances in Colloid and Interface Science
ISSN: 0001-8686 

223 

40-54 

English 

26043877 

10.1016/j.cis.2015.05.003 

WOS:000360774400002 

Spray-drying is a rapid, continuous, cost-effective, reproducible and scalable process for the production of dry powders from a fluid material by atomization through an atomizer into a hot drying gas medium, usually air. Often spray-drying is considered only a dehydration process, though it also can be used for the encapsulation of hydrophilic and hydrophobic active compounds within different carriers without substantial thermal degradation, even of heat-sensitive substances due to fast drying (seconds or milliseconds) and relatively short exposure time to heat. The solid particles obtained present relatively narrow size distribution at the submicron-to-micron scale. Generally, the yield% of spray-drying at laboratory scale with conventional spray-dryers is not optimal (20-70%) due to the loss of product in the walls of the drying chamber and the low capacity of the cyclone to separate fine particles (<2 μm). Aiming to overcome this crucial drawback in early development stages, new devices that enable the production of submicron particles with high yield, even for small sample amounts, have been introduced into the market. This review describes the most outstanding advantages and challenges of the spray-drying method for the production of pure drug particles and drug-loaded polymeric particles and discusses the potential of this technique and the more advanced equipment to pave the way toward reproducible and scalable processes that are critical to the bench-to-bedside translation of innovative pharmaceutical products. 

Spray-drying; Pure drug particles; Polymeric nanopartides; Polymeric microparticles; Nanocomposite microparticles; Drug-encapsulation