Development of spray-dried medicinal plant extracts with appropriate physical properties for direct compression

GALLO, LOREANA; PIÑA, JULIANA; ALLEMANDI, DANIEL; RAMÍREZ RIGO, VERÓNICA; BUCALÁ, VERÓNICA

Rosario

Otro; RICiFa 2º Reunión Internacional de Ciencias Farmacéuticas; 2012

Universidad Nacional de Rosario

More than 80% of the pharmaceutical industry production is based on powders in tablet form1. Direct compression (DC) is the most efficient process used for tablet preparation; it offers several advantages such as low labor costs, processing time and energy consumption2. Nevertheless, this technique is limited to powders with good flowability and low segregation tendency. Dried plant extracts (DPEs) are usually used as the therapeutically active ingredient for the manufacture of phytotablets. Generally, DPEs have poor flow properties and compactability; consequently, they cannot be directly compressed3. Therefore, the development of new technologies to obtain DPEs with accurate quality characteristics is an important issue for the herbal industry. In particular, the spray-drying technique is the preferred route due to its capacity to produce powders with precise specifications in continuous operations4. In a previous work and by using a factorial statistical design, Gallo et al.5 found the most efficient set of spray-drying operating conditions to produce a Rhamnus purshianus dried extract with good flowability and compactability for DC, low moisture content and hygroscopicity, and high process yield. The goal of this work was to evaluate the feasibility of spray-drying different plant medicinal extracts using the established set of operating conditions to obtain DPEs with good physical properties for DC and high process yield.