Current situation and perspectives in drug formulation by using supercritical fluid technology

Supercritical fluid (SCF) technology has been applied to drug product development over the last thirty years and drug particle generation using SCFs appears to be an efficient way to carry out drug formulation which will form end-products meeting targeted specifications. This article presents an overview of drug particle design using SCFs from a rather different perspective than usual, more focused on chemical and process engineering aspects. The main types of existing processes are described in a concise way and a focus is put on how to choose the right operating conditions considering both thermodynamic and hydrodynamic aspects. It is shown that the operating conditions and parameters can be easily optimized so as to facilitate the further process scale-up. Furthermore, the new trends in particle generation using SCFs are introduced, related either to new types of drug medicines that are treated or new ways of process implementation methods.