Predicting Performance of Medicines: Disintegration and Dissolution of Pharmaceutical Tablets

药品（如片剂）的生产和工艺工程涉及一系列复杂的单独工艺，以产生最终的口服固体剂型（片剂或胶囊）。近年来，已经进行了大量的研究，以产生对这些过程的理解和预测建模，并且这种不断扩展的知识现在正在对行业内这些制造过程的设计，放大和故障排除产生真实的影响。然而，人们仍然缺乏对这些产品在制成后如何发挥作用的了解，特别是难以预测这些片剂如何溶解和崩解，以将药物输送到体内。越来越多的人需要设计药物以提供长时间的延长释放，这使问题进一步复杂化。该研究项目的目的是深入研究片剂的溶解和崩解过程。学生将进行实验研究，以发展机械的理解，也将有可能应用计算方法来开发平板电脑性能的预测模型。

The manufacturing and process engineering of medicines such as tablets involves a complex sequence of individual processes, to generate the final oral solid dosage form (tablets or capsules). In recent years, much research has been conducted to generate understanding and predictive modelling for these processes, and this expanding knowledge is now making a real difference to the design, scale-up and troubleshooting of these manufacturing processes within the industry. However, there remains a lack of understanding of how these products perform after they are made, and in particular, it is difficult to predict how these tablets and will dissolve and disintegrate, to deliver medicines to the body. Increasingly, there is a need to engineer medicines to provide extended release over a long time, and this further complicates the problem.The aim of the research project is to study in depth the tablet dissolution and disintegration process. The student will conduct experimental investigations to develop mechanistic understanding, and there will also be potential to apply computational methods to develop predictive models for tablet performance.