Engineering Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients through Controlled Crystallization

Supervisors:  Prof.  J.D. Litster and Emeritus Prof. E.T. White
Particle and Systems Design Centre
Chemical Engineering Division, School of Engineering

Active Pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are usually purified and separated using crystallization.   The API must then be formulated with a number of excipient materials to make a dosage form suitable for drug delivery.  The most common dosage form is a compressed tablet. The formulation process can be quite complicated involving a number of solids processing steps.  The ease of formulation and the properties of the final tablet are critically dependent on the physicochemical properties of the crystalline API including size, size distribution, shape, polymorph and surface energy.  In typical industrial API crystallization, only limited attention is given to controlling of these properties.  This project will investigate methods to engineer the API crystals using very controlled crystallization and demonstrate the process on a model API compound.  The project will involve the

(1) characterizing the key thermodynamic and kinetic parameters of the system;
(2) designing a controlled crystallization process to produce the API with extremely controlled properties;
(3) demonstration of the controlled crystallization process at the laboratory scale using standard and/or novel crystallization approaches.

The effect of engineering the API properties on formulation properties and processing will be studied in a parallel project. 

The project is funded through a research grant from Pfizer (one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies) and includes a three month internship at Pfizer’s research facilities in Sandwich, UK. 

The Particle and Systems Design Centre (PSDC) within the School of Engineering is a world leading centre in Particle Engineering.  Graduates from the Centre are regularly placed world wide in industrial and academic positions.  For more information on the centre and the project supervisors go to http://www.cheque.uq.edu.au/psdc/ .