ABSTRACT
In commonly used oral solid preparations, poor mouthfeel results in poor patient compliance with the drug, which in turn reduces the market competitiveness of the drug. The problem of taste masking of pharmaceutical preparations has always been one of the important problems faced by pharmaceutics. With the increasing demand for the taste of drugs, the methods of masking bad taste of drugs have gradually increased in recent years. By summarizing the relevant literature covering the bad taste of drugs, the commonly used taste masking techniques include the addition of taste masking agents, inclusion techniques, microsphere/microcapsule technology, solid dispersion technology, ion exchange technology and the like. However, in addition to the above taste masking techniques, in the manufacturing process of the solid preparation, the granulation technique also can achieve the shielding of the bad taste of the medicine, and the granulation technique is simple, and can well achieve the effect of masking the bad taste of the medicine. This paper systematically introduces the research progress of granulation technology in drug taste masking, in order to provide reference for the selection of drug taste masking technology. With the increasing demand for drug taste, drug masking technology has been paid more and more attention by the majority of preparation workers, however, there are still some problems, such as imperfect taste evaluation system and low specificity of methods. This series of problems need to be further studied and solved by relevant pharmaceutical researchers.
ABSTRACT
Granulation, the process of particle enlargement by agglomeration technique, is one of the most significant unit operations in the production of pharmaceutical dosage forms, mostly tablets and capsules. Granulation process transforms fine powders into free-flowing, dust-free granules that are easy to compress. Nevertheless, granulation poses numerous challenges due to high quality requirement of the formed granules in terms of content uniformity and physicochemical properties such as granule size, bulk density, porosity, hardness, moisture, compressibility, etc. together with physical and chemical stability of the drug. Granulation process can be divided into two types: wet granulation that utilize a liquid in the process and dry granulation that requires no liquid. The type of process selection requires thorough knowledge of physicochemical properties of the drug, excipients, required flow and release properties, to name a few. Among currently available technologies, spray drying, roller compaction, high shear mixing, and fluid bed granulation are worth of note. Like any other scientific field, pharmaceutical granulation technology also continues to change, and arrival of novel and innovative technologies are inevitable. This review focuses on the recent progress in the granulation techniques and technologies such as pneumatic dry granulation, reverse wet granulation, steam granulation, moisture-activated dry granulation, thermal adhesion granulation, freeze granulation, and foamed binder or foam granulation. This review gives an overview of these with a short description about each development along with its significance and limitations.