The industrial pharmacy lab : New concepts in powder and process technology

The Industrial Pharmacy Lab (IPL) was founded in 2001 and has been awarded the NETS Award and NETS Special Award of the Gebert Ruf Foundation, Basel in 2004. The IPL is a turning platform between the university and the pharmaceutical industry at the Pharma Hub Basel with the focus on research in powder technology, dosage form design and scale-up. The IPL works with industrial-sized equipment and applies new and state-of-the-art technologies to the development of robust formulations. In the present article the research fields granulation process control, formulation of low water soluble drugs, modified release, and impact of the filling process on protein solutions are introduced and critical parameters, sources of variability, and scale-up problems are identified in order to suggest and provide a rational and optimal formulation and process for pharmaceutical dosage form design.