Design and utilization of the drug–excipient chemical compatibility automated system

To accelerate clinical formulation development, an excipient compatibility screen should be conducted as early as possible and it must be rapid, robust and resource sparing. This however, does not describe the traditional excipient compatibility testing approach, requiring many tedious and labor intensive manual operations. This study focused on transforming traditional practices into a completely automated screening process to increase sample throughput and realign resources to more urgent areas, while maintaining quality. Using the developed system, a complete on-line performance study was conducted whereby drug–excipient mixtures were weighed, blended and subjected to accelerated stress stability for up to 1 month, followed by sample extraction and HPLC analysis. Compared to off-line traditional study protocols, the system provided similar relative rank order results with equivalent precision and accuracy, while increasing sample throughput. The designed system offers a resource sparing primary screen for drug–excipient chemical compatibility for solid dosage form development. This approach allows risk assessment analysis, based upon formulation complexity, to be conducted prior to the commitment of resources and candidate selection for clinical development.