Design and Processing of solid Dispersions in pharmaceutical Industry

Solid dispersions have already been described over more than 50 years ago in scientific literature to improve solubility of poorly water soluble drugs. With the increasing number of new poorly soluble drug candidates discovered at early industrial stages, the knowledge about these metastable amorphous systems has significantly improved over the decades. While in the early days of solid dispersions pharmaceutical companies were rather very reluctant to invest in corresponding manufacturing technologies, nowadays a significant number of market drug products has been developed based upon this not novel drug delivery principle. The presentation will give an overview about properties of solid dispersions, industrial screening and manufacturing methods and the biopharmaceutical implications.