Impact of dry coating lactose as a brittle excipient on multi-component blend processability

Previous work demonstrated the benefits of dry coating fine-grade microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) for enabling direct compression (DC), a favored tablet manufacturing method, due to enhanced flowability while retaining good compactability of placebo and binary blends of cohesive APIs. Here, fine brittle excipients, Pharmatose 450 (P450, 19 μm) and Pharmatose 350 (P350, 29 μm), having both poor flowability and compactability are dry coated with silica A200 or R972P to assess DC capability of multi-component cohesive API (coarse acetaminophen, 22 μm, and ibuprofen50, 47 μm) blends. Dry coated P450 and P350 not only attained excellent flowability and high bulk density but also heightened tensile strength hence processability, which contrasts with reported reduction for dry coated ductile MCC. Although hydrophobic R972P imparted better flowability, hydrophilic A200 better enhanced tensile strength, hence selected for dry coating P450 in multi-component blends that included fine Avicel PH-105. For coarse acetaminophen blends, substantial bulk density and flowability increase without any detrimental effect on tensile strength were observed; a lesser amount of dry coated P450 was better. Increased flowability, bulk density, and tensile strength, hence enhanced processability by reaching DC capability, were observed for 60 wt% ibuprofen50, using only 18 wt% of the dry coated P450, i.e. 0.18 wt% silica in the blend.