Recent Advances in Secondary Processing of Pharmaceutical Powders

Pharmaceuticals are becoming increasingly important in modern society. In most cases, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are formed through crystallisation but need to be combined with excipients to form a tablet, or with carriers to form an oral suspension. The formation of tablets requires several secondary processing steps, such as milling of the API and mixing with excipients (often involving granulation) before finally being tabletted. Due to the differences in physical and mechanical properties that individual APIs and excipients exhibit, these secondary processing steps are often fraught with challenges. This Special Issue comprises 11 research articles and 1 review which outline the recent advances in secondary processing of pharmaceutical powders, and aims to enhance our understanding of powder behaviour and help us tackle these challenges. Through careful experimentation and the application of sophisticated computational techniques, the authors of these papers demonstrate advances in our understanding of many of the processing steps for pharmaceutical products. With this Special Issue, I hope to engage a broad readership in order to spark new ideas to further advance our knowledge of powder processing and to optimise production.