Mats Josefson

Time-resolved NIR/Vis spectroscopy for analysis of solids: Pharmaceutical tablets

Time-resolved spectroscopy in the visible and near-infrared (NIR) regions was used in a feasibility study for analysis of solid pharmaceuticals. The objective of the experiments was to study the interaction of light with pharmaceutical solids and to investigate the usefulness of the method as an analytical tool for spectroscopic analysis. In these experiments, a pulsed Ti:sapphire laser and white light generation in water was utilized to form a pulsed light source in the visible/NIR region. The light was focused onto the surface of tablets, and the transmitted light was detected by a time-resolving streak camera. Two types of measurements were performed. First, a spectrometer was put in front of the streak camera for spectral resolution. Secondly, the signal originating from different locations of the sample was collected. Time-resolved and wavelength/spatially resolved data were generated and compared for a number of different samples. The most striking result from the experiments is that the typical optical path length through a 3.5-mm-thick tablet is about 20–25 cm. This indicates very strong multiple scattering in these samples. Monte Carlo simulations and comparison with experimental data support very high scattering coefficients on the order of 500 cm−1. Furthermore, the data evaluation shows that photons with a particular propagation time through the sample contain a higher chemical contrast than other propagation times or than steady-state information. In conclusion, time-resolved NIR spectroscopy yields more information about solid pharmaceutical samples than conventional steady-state spectroscopy.

A quality by design approach to investigate the effect of mannitol and dicalcium phosphate qualities on roll compaction

Roll compaction is a continuous process for solid dosage form manufacturing increasingly popular within pharmaceutical industry. Although roll compaction has become an established technique for dry granulation, the influence of material properties is still not fully understood. In this study, a quality by design (QbD) approach was utilized, not only to understand the influence of different qualities of mannitol and dicalcium phosphate (DCP), but also to predict critical quality attributes of the drug product based solely on the material properties of that filler. By describing each filler quality in terms of several representative physical properties, orthogonal projections to latent structures (OPLS) was used to understand and predict how those properties affected drug product intermediates as well as critical quality attributes of the final drug product. These models were then validated by predicting product attributes for filler qualities not used in the model construction. The results of this study confirmed that the tensile strength reduction, known to affect plastic materials when roll compacted, is not prominent when using brittle materials. Some qualities of these fillers actually demonstrated improved compactability following roll compaction. While direct compression qualities are frequently used for roll compacted drug products because of their excellent flowability and good compaction properties, this study revealed that granules from these qualities were more poor flowing than the corresponding powder blends, which was not seen for granules from traditional qualities. The QbD approach used in this study could be extended beyond fillers. Thus any new compound/ingredient would first be characterized and then suitable formulation characteristics could be determined in silico, without running any additional experiments.

TOF-SIMS analysis of exhaled particles from patients with asthma and healthy controls

Particles in exhaled air (PEx) may reflect the composition of respiratory tract lining fluid (RTLF); thus, there is a need to assess their potential as sources of biomarkers for respiratory diseases. In the present study, we compared PEx from patients with asthma and controls using time-of-flight–secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) and multivariate analysis. Particles were collected using an instrument developed in-house. 15 nonsmoking subjects with physician-diagnosed asthma and 11 nonsmoking healthy controls performed 10 consecutive forced exhalations into the instrument. Particle concentrations were recorded and samples of particles collected on silicon plates were analysed by TOF-SIMS. Subjects with asthma exhaled significantly lower numbers of particles than controls (p=0.03) and the ratio of unsaturated to saturated phospholipids was significantly lower in samples from subjects with asthma (0.25 versus 0.35; p=0.036). Orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis models showed good separation between both positive and negative spectra. Molecular ions from phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylglycerol, and protein fragments were found to discriminate the groups. We conclude that analysis of PEx is a promising method to examine the composition of RTLF. In the present explorative study, we could discriminate between subjects with asthma and healthy controls based on TOF-SIMS spectra from PEx.

Multivariate evaluation of doxorubicin surface-enhanced Raman spectra

Multivariate evaluation of surface-enhanced Raman spectra of doxorubicin in plasma was performed. In a principal component analysis (PCA) all spectral features were modelled into three principal components. The major variation of the data was shown to be the variation of doxorubicin Raman signal together with the doxorubicin fluorescence, whereas the variation due to plasma was of minor importance. It was also shown that the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) measurements were independent on such factors as measurement occasion and silver colloids. The presented results show that with some improvements, quantification of doxorubicin directly in plasma could be possible.

The synthesis of metoprolol monitored using Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics

The synthesis of Metoprolol base was studied using Raman spectroscopy with a 785-nm laser, optical fibres, a holographic transmission grating, confocal optics and a charge-coupled device (CCD) detector. The reaction mixture was heated according to a temperature gradient and spectra of the reaction mixture were obtained by focusing the laser beam through ordinary reaction flasks. Because of overlapping bands, multivariate techniques such as principal components analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares projections to latent structures (PLS) were used in the evaluation of the obtained spectra. The use of PCA or PLS against time does not require any calibration samples and a quantitative calibration is not necessary in order to monitor the reaction. A method for reaction endpoint determination, based on euclidean distances in the score space, is presented. The use of multivariate batch control charts have been demonstrated and a number of problems and solutions regarding the sample presentation have been discussed. The effect of spectral pretreatment on the multivariate results is shown and discussed. The monitoring results show that the time to produce Metoprolol base could be reduced.

Combining experimental design and orthogonal projections to latent structures to study the influence of microcrystalline cellulose properties on roll compaction

Roll compaction is gaining importance in pharmaceutical industry for the dry granulation of heat or moisture sensitive powder blends with poor flowing properties prior to tabletting. We studied the influence of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) properties on the roll compaction process and the consecutive steps in tablet manufacturing. Four dissimilar MCC grades, selected by subjecting their physical characteristics to principal components analysis, and three speed ratios, i.e. the ratio of the feed screw speed and the roll speed of the roll compactor, were included in a full factorial design. Orthogonal projection to latent structures was then used to model the properties of the resulting roll compacted products (ribbons, granules and tablets) as a function of the physical MCC properties and the speed ratio. This modified version of partial least squares regression separates variation in the design correlated to the considered response from the variation orthogonal to that response. The contributions of the MCC properties and the speed ratio to the predictive and orthogonal components of the models were used to evaluate the effect of the design variation. The models indicated that several MCC properties, e.g. bulk density and compressibility, affected all granule and tablet properties, but only one studied ribbon property: porosity. After roll compaction, Ceolus KG 1000 resulted in tablets with obvious higher tensile strength and lower disintegration time compared to the other MCC grades. This study confirmed that the particle size increase caused by roll compaction is highly responsible for the tensile strength decrease of the tablets.

Roll compaction process modeling : transfer between equipment and impact of process parameters

In this study, the roll compaction of an intermediate drug load formulation was performed using horizontally and vertically force fed roll compactors. The horizontally fed roll compactor was equipped with an instrumented roll technology allowing the direct measurement of normal stress at the roll surface, while the vertically fed roll compactor was equipped with a force gauge between the roll axes. Furthermore, characterization of ribbons, granules and tablets was also performed. Ribbon porosity was primarily found to be a function of normal stress, exhibiting a quadratic relationship thereof. A similar quadratic relationship was also observed between roll force and ribbon porosity of the vertically fed roll compactor. The predicted peak pressure (Pmax) using the Johanson model was found to be higher than the measured normal stress, however, the predicted Pmax correlated well with the ribbon relative density/porosity and the majority of downstream properties of granules and tablets, demonstrating its use as a scale-independent parameter. A latent variable model was developed for both the horizontal and vertical fed roll compactors to express ribbon porosity as a function of geometric and process parameters. The model validation, performed with new data, resulted in overall good predictions. This study successfully demonstrated the scale up/transfer between two different roll compactors and revealed that the combined use of design of experiments, latent variable models and in silico predictions result in better understanding of the critical process parameters in roll compaction.

Near-infrared chemical imaging (NIR-CI) on roll compacted ribbons and tablets--multivariate mapping of physical and chemical properties.

Near-infrared chemical imaging (NIR-CI) is an attractive technique within the pharmaceutical industry, where tools are continuously in demand to assess the quality of the intermediate and final products. The present paper demonstrates how NIR-CI in combination with multivariate methods was utilized to spatially map physical properties and content of roll compacted ribbons and tablets. Additionally, extracted textural parameters from tablet images were correlated to the design parameters of the roll compaction process as well as to the physical properties of the granules. The results established the use of NIR-CI as a complementary nondestructive tool to determine the ribbon density and map the density distribution across the width and along the length of the ribbons. For the tablets, the compaction pressure developed during compression increased with the lateral distance from the center. Therefore, NIR-CI can be an effective tool to provide information about the spatial distribution of the compaction pressures on the surface of the tablet. Moreover, low roll compaction roll force correlated to a heterogeneous type of texture in the API chemical image. Overall, texture analysis of the tablets enabled efficient investigation of the spatial variation and could be used to advance process understanding. Finally, orthogonal projections to latent structures (O2PLS) model facilitated the understanding of the interrelationships between textural features, design parameters and physical properties data by separately joint and unique variations.

Light Leakage Effects with Different Sample Holder Geometries in Quantitative Near-Infrared Transmission Spectroscopy of Pharmaceutical Tablets

Transmission geometry is becoming an alternative to the conventional reflectance geometry in near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy of pharmaceuticals. An advantage of transmission NIR is that it samples a volume whereas reflectance NIR merely samples the surface region of solid preparations. This leads to more representative measurements on complex matrices, such as some types of tablets. However, more attention must be paid to sample presentation with respect to light leakage. An investigation of the effects of the light leakage obtained with different sample holder geometries on content calibrations for transmission NIR on tablets was performed. Two different model samples, a composite and a compact tablet, were measured in sample wells in which the diameters and heights were varied according to a multivariate design. This was done in order to simulate a mismatch between the tablet and the sample well. Partial least-squares (PLS) models were built and used to evaluate the significance of the sample well geometry. Liquid chromatography was used as a reference method. As expected, for both types of tablets it was found that a small mismatch in tablet-to-well diameter deteriorated the repeatability of the NIR spectra, although, unexpectedly, this gave the best predictions and more robust models. In all, this indicates that light leakage should not be minimized at calibration, but included as a factor in the multivariate model that spans the future expected variation in light leakage.

Chemical images of marine bio-active compounds by surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy and transposed orthogonal partial least squares (T-OPLS)

Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy combined with transposed Orthogonal Partial Least Squares (T-OPLS) was shown to produce chemical images of the natural antibacterial surface-active compound 1,1,3,3-tetrabromo-2-heptanone (TBH) on Bonnemaisonia hamifera. The use of gold colloids functionalised with the internal standard 4-mercapto-benzonitrile (MBN) made it possible to create images of the relative concentration of TBH over the surfaces. A gradient of TBH could be mapped over and in the close vicinity of the B. hamifera algal vesicles at the attomol/pixel level. T-OPLS produced a measure of the spectral correlation for each pixel of the hyperspectral images whilst not including spectral variation that was linearly independent of the target spectrum. In this paper we show the possibility to retrieve specific spectral information with a low magnitude in a complex matrix.