Critical Evaluation of Laboratory Potentiometric Electronic Tongues for Pharmaceutical Analysis—An Overview

Abstract

Electronic tongue systems equipped with cross-sensitive potentiometric sensors have been applied to pharmaceutical analysis, due to the possibility of various applications and developing new formulations. Many studies already proved the complementarity between the electronic tongue and classical analysis such as dissolution tests indicated by Pharmacopeias. However, as a new approach to study pharmaceuticals, electronic tongues lack strict testing protocols and specification limits; therefore, their results can be improperly interpreted and inconsistent with the reference studies. Therefore, all aspects of the development, measurement conditions, data analysis, and interpretation of electronic tongue results were discussed in this overview. The critical evaluation of the effectiveness and reliability of constructed devices may be helpful for a better understanding of electronic tongue systems development and for providing strict testing protocols.

Orodispersible Films with Rupatadine Fumarate Enclosed in Ethylcellulose Microparticles as Drug Delivery Platform with Taste-Masking Effect

“…The used procedure for electronic tongue analysis is a standard measurement protocol applied previously for various pharmaceutical samples by our team [ 32 ]. It was applied to test taste-masking efficiency and release of drugs from the studied formulations.…”

Emerging biotechnology applications in natural product and synthetic pharmaceutical analyses

“…Electronic tongues are devices consisting of arrays of low-selective sensors and using advanced mathematical procedures for signal processing based on multivariate data analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), pattern recognition, and artificial neural networks (ANNs) 179 . A large number of chemical sensors were used in the design of electronic tongue sensor arrays 180 . Specifically, the electronic tongue system has been used for pharmaceutical analysis, such as the investigation of taste-masking efficiency, dissolution measurement, and quality control of drugs, herbal medicine, and medicinal plants for batch-to-batch product reproducibility and determination of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) 181 , 182 .…”

“…New drug formulations and dosage forms are constantly being introduced with novel pharmaceutical technologies. Artificial sensing systems were thus developed as supplementary analysis methods for pharmaceutical formulations 180 . Weitschies et al.…”

Utilization of Ethylcellulose Microparticles with Rupatadine Fumarate in Designing Orodispersible Minitablets with Taste Masking Effect

“…The electrodes calibration curves were performed in 10 −5 -10 −3 mol L −1 RUP solutions because of the poor solubility of RUP in water. Previously developed measurement protocol for electronic tongue analysis of pharmaceutical samples [32] was applied to test taste masking and API dissolution from designed ODMTs. First, the sensors were immersed in deionized water (50 mL) to obtain 5 min signal stabilization.…”