Dry powder coating technology for pharmaceutical solid dosage forms

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Coating of pharmaceutical solid dosage forms such as tablets and beads are often required in order to improve product appearance and handle-ability, mask taste/odor, smoothen swallowing; increase patient compliance, protect product from moisture and light, and modify drug release characteristics (enteric or sustained release).  However, almost all commercial coating processes are based on liquid coating technology, with which a coating solution/suspension is sprayed onto the solid dosage forms and then the liquid gets evaporated to form a dry coating film on the surface. The most significantdisadvantage of liquid coating is the very high cost (capital and operation) of heating the large quantity of air for drying the liquid before curing and the requirements of cleaning both the intake as well as outgoing air.Based on a patented ultrafine powder coating technology developed by the applicant for the automobile and other industries, our preliminary study under an earlier NSERC-I2I project has shown that dry powder coating can also be applied directly on dry pharmaceutical dosage forms (tablets and beads), to realize the benefits of dry powder coating (less energy consumption and environmentally-friendly). The proposed research is to further improve on this technology, by developing a series of suitable formulations for dry powder coating, by optimizing the operating conditions, and by scaling up the process to a semi-production scale suitable for in-vitro studies, so that this technology can be successfully applied in the pharmaceutical industry.The applicant has had many years of experience in powder processing and handling, including powder coating. The Particle Technology Research Centre at UWO and the large amount of equipment purchased through several recent CFI grants will provide the necessary infrastructure for the proposed project. The applicant also has a long collaborating relationship with the support company who also supported the earlier 121 project.