Ideal Cures R&D centre eyes ambitious plans for future

Ideal Cures research centre and application laboratory in Goregaon, Mumbai has reached 50 per cent capacity utilisation, a little over a year after its inauguration in February 2011. Spread over 14,000 sq feet, the Rs nine crore facility today houses the R&D and IPR team consisting of 26 personnel.

Ideal Cures is one of the country’s leading excipient manufacturer and technical services provider, especially in the area of tablet film coating. It has fully functional film coating application laboratories in Vasai (Maharashtra), Panchkulla (Haryana) and Milan (Italy) for film coating. The R&D centre in Goregaon has been set up to put Ideal Cures on the forefront of specialised excipient and formulation development support, which is the company’s second R&D centre in Mumbai.

Suresh Pareek, Managing Director, Ideal Cures said, “The idea behind this centre is to provide the neutral spheres for drug loading for modified release systems, ready-to-use polymer blends for extended release (ER) tablet formulations and new acrylic polymers for enteric film coating. Our vision is to do this for our customers and offer ready-to-use blends, fully compliant with regulatory requirements and tested in our labs for all stability parameters. We feel this will save a lot of time and resources.”

The Goregaon centre is headed by Dr Ashok Omray, President, Ideal Cures, a veteran of both MNC and Indian pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Cadila Pharma, USV etc. Speaking about the projects taken up by the laboratory, he said that the equipment at the Goregaon facility allows customers to try out the film coating experiments starting from as low as 100 g tablets scaling upto 15 kg at incremental quantities, so that wastage can be minimised and the results can be correlated from commercial scale-up point of view.

Omray further said, “Among the innovative projects that the centre is extensively working is developing the ready-to-use blends for extended release formulations. This is an innovative thought, absolutely new to the world. We have worked on several drug molecules (namely Diclofenac Sodium tablets 100 mg; Metformin HCl tablets 500 and 1,000 mg, Metoprolol Succinate tablets 25, 50, 100 and 200 mg and Paracetamol ER tablets 650 mg) and this technique must come very handy for quick and dependable launches of ER products. The development work for several other important drugs is currently going on.”

The research centre and application laboratory in Goregaon is equipped with lab scale and scale-up facilities (machines, equipment and analytical instruments) to provide support for developing the complete range of oral solid dosage forms. This includes tablets (all types), hard gelatine capsules, pellets, spheres, acrylic polymers and modified release solid oral dosage forms.

Omray mentioned that during this period the company has already filed three patents (other than film coating) and non-infringing work on several other techniques and range of products in being actively pursued.

The novel set of equipment worth mentioning include Spray dryer, Wurster coating – Pam Glatt 1.1 GPGC (bottom and top spray for powders, pellets and tablets), auto coater for film coating with perforated pan (capacity upto 15 kg), conventional film coaters with pan sizes to handle quantities from 50 g to five kg, Dissolution rate test apparatus USP type III (in addition to regular ones), walk-in chambers for stability studies with climatic conditions meeting the ICH recommendations for global regulatory requirements etc.

The centre has a highly qualified team and experienced scientists, who are available to plan and execute the projects. Ideal Cures’ field force and technical support team is available at their facility. and customers’ manufacturing or research facilities for technical support, problem solving, demonstrations, providing support for upgrading the facilities and discussions to get input for future development and improvement.

These projects are besides the company’s own ongoing development and new products in the field of film coating. The company’s endeavour is to bring out innovative, economic, eco-friendly and effective film coating solutions. The company has made great strides in the field of other ready-to-use excipients for the pharma industry which include – acrylic polymers (for film coating and taste masking) neutral spheres for drug loading and extended cooling compounds.

EP News Bureau — Mumbai