Consistency of Pharmaceutical Products: An FDA Perspective on Hot-Melt Extrusion Process

Hot-melt extrusion represents an efficient technology to formulate drugs with poor aqueous solubility into safe and effective drug delivery systems. The interest in this technology continues to grow as it is suitable for both high dose and potent low dose compounds. It is amenable to real-time monitoring and control of the consistency of the product with respect to content uniformity and crystalline conversion. Quality-by-design (QbD) has become an essential part of modern pharmaceutical quality systems since it incorporates an enhanced product and process understanding. It encourages real-time monitoring and control of critical material attributes and process parameters. The QbD paradigm can be easily incorporated into hot-melt processes. It has the potential to replace traditional batch processes due to its continuous nature and ease of scale-up from laboratory scale to commercial scale.