Tecastemizole, an active metabolite of the histamine H 1 -receptor antagonist Astemizole (Hismanal), crystallizes out in two polymorphic forms (form A and form B). Thermodynamic stability screening results show that form A is more stable and form B is kinetically favorable (metastable) in the temperature range of process interest. A process design switch from a seed controlled growth approach to a solvent mediated interconversion based approach was adopted for reasons of simplicity and robustness during early Phase II development. The effects of dissolution, mass transfer, and surface-controlled growth on the observed interconversion rate were studied under well-defined seeding conditions. The experimental results show a significant effect of operating temperature on the interconversion rate and also show that the rate-limiting step is the growth of form A. Growth controlled kinetic parameters were estimated and are reported here. A nonlinear cooling profile was developed to take advantage of the temperature rate effect on form interconversion. Scale-up of the modified procedure was performed at both pilot and full-scale manufacturing, and the results confirmed the laboratory findings.
A laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy-based analytical methodology is developed to study tablet coating variability in pharmaceutical tablets. The method quantifies the amount of coating on a tablet by assigning an average coating thickness score to it. When tested using samples with different amounts of coating, the coating thickness scores showed direct correlation to the weight gain of the tablet, hence validating the analytical method. The relative significance of the processing parameters and the components of variability were computed using statistical techniques. The sampling frequency of laser shots was found to have no significant effect. The effect of the position of the laser pulse on the tablet surface was found to be significant; however, it was determined that this effect was due to the tablet curvature, which resulted in the laser optical path to intersect the coating diagonally. The variability between batches (lots) manufactured under the same processing conditions was not significant. The largest avoidable source of variability was the tablet-to-tablet component, possibly indicating the inadequate mixing performance of the coating device.
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