[learn_more caption=”Rahul V. Haware”] Rahul is a formulation scientist focusing on the emerging field of Pharmaceutical Material Science. His study focuses on the impact of the physico-mechanical properties of crystalline and amorphous materials on their final dosage form design. He uses advanced analytical techniques like powder and single crystal X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, thermal gravimetric analysis, important modules in Material Studio®, powder rheometer and compaction simulator, to evaluate obtained data by multivariate analysis techniques to develop predictive models within subjected design space.

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Rahul has almost 3 years of teaching experience at Campbell University, Buies-Creek. He has almost 14 years of lecture and laboratory experience at prestigious institutions such as the University of Hawaii at Hilo, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway, and RD College of Pharmacy, Bhor, India. Rahul has also trained several graduate and undergraduate students in the field of Pharmaceutical Material Science, which enabled them to present their research work in symposiums, and to get co-authorship in original research articles published in international journals. [/learn_more]

The present study deals to develop DM² approach to understand, evaluate, and predict the compression and tablet properties. This approach combines a combination of design of experiments, macroscopic properties evaluated by mathematical models, and multivariate analysis methods (MVA) based on continues compression profiles. The formulation and process parameter effects (e.g. composition, compression speed, powder properties) on well-known plastic (Avicel^® 102), elastic (Starch 1500^®) and fragmenting (Spherolac^®100) excipients and their binary mixture were evaluated by 2³ full factorial design with three center points. A constant true volume tablets of 11 mm diameter were compressed from hand-weighed powder at 104.1±0.2MPa using a compaction simulator. Heckel and work related parameters were evaluated from the obtained compression data. MVA methods like principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least square regression (PLS-1) were used for data evaluation. The PCA indicated that Hausner ratio, work of compression (WoC), and tensile strength (TS) are negatively correlated to plastic (YPpl) and elastic (YPel) deformation yield pressure, Emcompress^® fraction, helium-, bulk-, and tapped density, and particle size. PLS-1 method is used to quantify correlation between macroscopic properties of the materials with most important responses (e.g. WoC, YPpl, YPel, TS). The results were found in accordance with the literature and show the ability of DM² approach to quantify compression behavior, as a step towards a ‘formulation development tool’ for the tablet.