Advance active packaging solutions to prevent brittleness in capsules: Dhairy Sharma, Technical Sales, Cilicant

Dhairy Sharma, Technical Sales, Cilicant, began his presentation by thanking Mehta for his keynote address, wherein he widely elaborated on how quality is a crucial factor for manufacturing drugs. Sharma said that making quality and safe products is a half way of a journey. To deliver that optimum-quality product throughout the shelf life, it’s also an important task, and being an active manufacturer, Cilicant has realised that every product is unique and requires different solutions for stability. He then drew comparison between moisture content and water activity and explained the various factors associated with both of these. He informed that moisture content is the total amount of wa ter molecules, and is quantitative in nature, along with being a driving force that decides how one can choose the right packaging.

He then explained about one of the products, Accuflip, offered by Cilicant, which is an Equilibrium Relative Humidity (ERH) regulator that regulates the ERH within a specified range to protect the product. It regulates the ERH to 20±5 per cent RH within the enclosed primary packaging, and pre vents over-desiccation of capsule cells. It has a specialised sorbent which adsorbs and deabsorbs the moisture at the same time. Elaborating more on the relation between water activity and ERH, he mentioned that water activity is a ratio of vapour pressure of water inside the sample to the vapour pressure of pure water at the same temperature. Furthermore, pure water has a water activity of one. Therefore, in context of pharma packaging, the reason behind dealing with the ERH is to multiply the water activity by 100, and Accufilip maintains this ERH to safeguard capsules.

At last, he summed up his presentation with the statement, “Right solution at the right time is really important.”