Spray Drying Inhalables
Using GEA’s knowledge of spray drying and formulation makes it possible to accurately manipulate aerodynamic particle size and flow properties. As such, it is easier than ever before to efficiently produce therapies in the form of free-flowing particles of a small aerodynamic size, suitable for inhalation. As a delivery method, inhalation is particularly relevant for commercializing biological compounds such as hormones, peptides and proteins that risk degradation if ingested.
From Formulation to Production
Spray drying is the most widely used industrial process for particle formation and drying. It is well suited for the continuous production of dry solids in powder or agglomerated particles or from a liquid feedstock. The feedstock can include solutions, emulsions and pumpable suspensions. The technology is ideal when the end-product must comply with precise quality standards such as particle size distribution, residual moisture content, bulk density and particle morphology.
Spray drying provides unprecedented particle control and allows previously unattainable delivery methods and molecular characteristics. These advantages allow previously unattainable delivery methods and molecular characteristics to be explored.
Spray drying is a simple, rapid, reproducible and easy to scale-up production process that has been intensively investigated for pulmonary drug delivery systems. It has the potential to generate highly dispersible powders for inhalation with a mean particle size down to 2–3 μm size with a manipulable particle morphology.
Spray drying is well suited to produce inhalable dry powders with predetermined specifications for lung delivery (light particles in the size of 0.5–3.3 μm for lung alveoli deposition). Treating diseases such as asthma, tuberculosis, diabetes and bacterial infections of the lung are suitable applications for spray dried particles. The key benefits of this technology are the possibilities to control the size and morphology of the particles. The fact that it is a very gentle method means that even heat-sensitive materials like protein based drugs can be treated. Recent developments offer new possibilities in the field of laboratory scale spray drying and eliminate some weak points of traditional spray dryers, such as limited recovery and the ability to spray dry milligram sample amounts.
User Specific
The spray drying process entirely depends on the composition of the product. Some products are very easy and others very difficult to dry. In this context it should be stated that a GEA dryer is designed and the process parameters selected to ensure
- best product quality
- low energy consumption
- protection of the environment
- long operation time between cleaning
- fulfil EU directives.
To support our design engineers when they select the spray drying parameters and thereby the size of the spray dryer, our DRYNETICS method is used.
Application Specific
