In drug production, excipients are used to hold the active ingredient (API) and make the products easier to handle.This can help when the API is extremely potent and the dosage needs to be heavily controlled or if it needs help to be absorbed into the human body. Excipients come in tablet form for oral administration, and as a suppository for rectal administration.They can prolong the shelf life of medicines making them more competitive so companies keep their excipient recipes a secret.
Deciding on the ingredients that go into excipients can be decided by using GMP consulting, which can give you advice on the colourings, lubricants and flavourings to be used.The ingredients you use mark you out from the other drugs on the market.
Having a signature colour for your product can make it stand out from other drugs. It also makes it easier to identify your medicine by health care professionals and patients.
Flavourings can mask the horrible taste of the ingredients in drugs for example mint or cherry will mask a bitter flavour. Raspberry counteracts sour flavours and apricots make salty flavours less prominent.
Giving a longer shelf life to drugs is done by using preservatives.Vitamins A, E and C are used for this method and citric acid is as well. You can use synthetic ingredients as well like parabens.
Lubricants can be sourced from minerals like talk or from fats including vegetable fats and stearic acid which are most commonly used in tablets and hard gel capsules. They stop ingredients from sticking to the machinery and from clumping together during production.
Making drugs more manageable and practical to produce is why fillers are used. They need to be cost effective so they should be cheap, tasteless and also work well with the active ingredients in the drug.
Excipients need to do all these roles and more. GMP consulting can help manufacturers to decide which ingredients to use and what will work best with the API. This is vital to ensure that your product is safe for human use because all of the ingredients are compatible with each other and do not cause any serious side effects.
