Nov 21 2008
Dow Wolff Cellulosics, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company and its affiliates, today announced that a second drug candidate developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY) will use Dow’s Foam Granulation Technology™ (FGT) in the development and manufacturing of tablets intended for clinical and commercial use.
“This new drug candidate confirms that the benefits and advantages of Dow’s FGT versus existing granulation technologies are clear,” said Hirotsugu Furukawa, global market manager for pharmaceuticals at Dow Wolff Cellulosics. “This new technology allows for fast, simple, and cost effective granulation and could help minimize issues associated with conventional processes. Without modifying existing equipment and using a low-cost foam generator, the manufacturing process uses less water than traditional wet granulation processing while rapidly coating particle surfaces and shortening processing time.”
The inherently large surface areas of foams provide more efficient particle coverage than may be achieved by conventional spray technology. Elimination of spray nozzles removes some of the variables that are commonly encountered in spray granulation. It has been observed by Dow Wolff Cellulosics that particle size distribution is virtually unaffected by foam addition rate; this leads to a dramatic simplification in product scale-up. Drug content uniformity is also improved which is especially important in low-dose formulations. Dow Wolff Cellulosics offers multi-functional excipients – METHOCEL™ and ETHOCEL™ cellulose ethers WALOCEL™ sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, and POLYOX™ poly(ethylene) oxide resins – that have been used in pharmaceutical formulations for more than 40 years including applications such as controlled release, tablet coating, hot melt extrusion and granulation.