Particulate Processes in the Formulation of Pharmaceuticals, Nutraceuticals and Bioactive Compounds

Dear Colleagues,

Particulate processes producing particles in size scales from nanometers to millimeters play a major role in health sciences and the product market. This is because about 60% of marketed pharmaceuticals are solid dosage forms and about the same percentage of the overall nutraceutical consumption is accounted by dry excipients. The large number of orally administered poorly water-soluble drugs has necessitated the development of modern particle engineering processes aiming for improvement of solubility, permeability, and targeting effectiveness. Nanomilling, high-pressure homogenization, self-emulsification, and solid-lipid technology give particles in the nanosize range; spray-drying, freeze drying, and freeze spraying into liquid give composite microparticles in the micrometers range; electrospinning, electrospraying, and hot melt extrusion are able to produce drugs in the form of pharmaceutical salts, cocrystals, amorphous and co-amorphous drug systems, which after mechanical milling give particles in an intermediate size range of 10–100 μm. Finally, wet and dry granulation, melt granulation, and extrusion/spheronization are widely applied to give a free-flowing powder product split into multiple-unit dosage forms where the dose is subdivided into units of millimeter size particles with therapeutic and technological benefits. Similar considerations as set above apply to nutraceuticals with therapeutic properties, such as essential oils, prebiotics, and probiotics and other microorganisms, e.g., vaccines.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions of original research work and reviews reporting established and emerging technologies of particle engineering, the application of which leads to improvements in the properties of the particulate products, namely in the solubility, redispersibility, release, and permeability of the bioactive compound, handling (packing ability and flowability), compressibility and compactibility, swelling, matrix forming ability, and suitability for thermal processing. Application of mathematical models to describe the mechanisms and kinetics of particle formation, critical process factors involved in product quality and production yield, novel methods of particle structure, and solid-state characterization are encouraged.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ioannis Nikolakakis
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nizar Al-Zoubi
Guest Editors

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