‘A unique approach in characterizing pharmaceutical powders’

The combination of image analysis and Raman spectroscopy for particle characterization is without doubt a powerful one, and I was very interested to see the authors of a newly published article describing it as ‘a unique approach in the characterization of pharmaceutical powders’ and one likely to ‘contribute significantly to process understanding’.

The title of the paper, which is published in American Pharmaceutical Review and freely available online, is ‘Physical Morphology and Spectroscopic Classification in the Development of Pharmaceutical Powders’ by Justin Pritchard and Martin Warman of Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

What are the benefits?

While particle size distribution of active ingredients and excipients is central to the proper performance of pharmaceutical products, the shape of the particles can also have a significant effect, and adding chemical identification into the mix provides a further powerful analytical tool. So now the size, shape and chemistry of particles can be determined in a single analysis, and I can attest to the fact that Malvern’s Morphologi G3-ID , which offers the combination of fully automated image analysis and Raman spectroscopy, is attracting a great deal of interest – and not only from the pharmaceutical industry.

If you’d like to know more, then I can thoroughly recommend the application notes and presentations that you will find on our website, as well as a read of the paper in American Pharmaceutical Review.