Pharmaceutical manufacturing
Drug manufacturing is the process of industrial-scale synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs by pharmaceutical companies. The process of drug manufacturing can be broken down into a series of unit operations, such as milling, granulation, coating, tablet pressing, and others.
Unit Operations
Formulation and Pre-Formulation Development
Before a drug can be manufactured at any scale, much work goes into the actual formulation of the drug. Formulation development scientists must evaluate a compound for uniformity, stability and many other factors. After the evaluation phase, a solution must be developed to deliver the drug in its required form such as solid, semi-solid, immediate or controlled release, tablet, capsule, and many other variations.
Milling
During the drug manufacturing process, milling is often required in order to reduce the average particle size in a drug powder. There are a number of reasons for this, including increasing homogeneity and dosage uniformity, increasing bioavailability, and increasing the solubility of the drug compound.