Extrusion for pharma applications: An update

Abstract

AbstractThis paper aims to give an overview of our current research and development on hot‐melt extrusion (HME) for pharmaceutical formulation and drug delivery. Unfortunately, a large percentage of marketed drugs (40%) and those in the development pipeline (90%) are poorly water soluble. We use a few examples to show that solubility of APIs can be drastically improved by using HME to mix them with different biocompatible polymers and playing with the various process parameters (extrusion temperature, screw speed, screw configuration, etc.). The advantages of this technique are then presented as well as the further development needed to make this process fully industrial for pharmaceutical purposes.