Antisense oligonucleotides and their technical suitability to nebulization.

In vivo studies investigating the inhalative efficacy of biotherapeutics, such as nucleic acids, usually do not perform an aerosolization step, rather the solution is directly administered into the lungs e.g. intratracheally. In addition, there is currently very little information on the behavior of nucleic acid solutions when subjected to the physical stress of the nebulization process. In this study, the aim was to assess the technical suitability of Locked Nucleic Acids (LNAs), as a model antisense oligonucleotide, towards nebulization using two commercially available nebulizers. A jet nebulizer (Pari LC Plus) and a vibrating mesh nebulizer (Aerogen Solo) were employed and solutions of five different LNAs investigated in terms of their physical and chemical stability to nebulization and the quality of the generated aerosols. The aerosol properties of the Aerogen Solo were mainly influenced by the viscosity of the solutions with the output rate and the droplet size decreasing with increasing viscosity. The Pari LC Plus was less susceptible to viscosity and overall the droplet size was smaller. The LNAs tolerated both nebulization processes and the integrity of the molecules was shown. Chemical stability of the molecules from the Aerogen Solo was confirmed, whereas aerosol generation with the Pari LC Plus jet nebulizer led to a slight increase of phosphodiester groups in a fully phosphorothiolated backbone of the LNAs. Overall, it could be shown that nebulization of different LNAs is possible and inhalation can therefore be considered a potential route of administration.

Process and scaling parameters for wet media milling in early phase drug development: A knowledge based approach.

Wet media milling is a well-established unit operation for the manufacturing of suspension formulations during early phase pharmaceutical development. However, knowledge about the kinetics of particle breakage is limited, although the impact of hydro-mechanical process parameters on the mean particle size of finished suspensions has been thoroughly investigated. We performed in this work milling trials with two different compounds on two milling devices with different mechanical design and volume scale. We analyzed our data in terms of a kinetic milling model where we included the milling speed as an explicit process parameter in addition to the process duration. We show, that the milling kinetics can be fairly well predicted for a wide range of these operating parameters. The proposed milling model may therefore be useful for rational process planning and scale-up considerations in the industrial setting.

Time domain NMR as a new process monitoring method for characterization of pharmaceutical hydrates.

Hydrates are of great pharmaceutical relevance and even though they have been characterized thoroughly by various analytical techniques, there is barely literature available on molecular mobility of the hydrate water studied by NMR relaxation in the time domain. The aim of this work was to examine the possibility of differentiating hydration states of drugs by 1H time domain NMR (TD-NMR) regarding spin-spin and spin-lattice relaxation times (T2 and T1) using benchtop equipment. Caffeine and theophylline were selected as model compounds and binary mixtures of hydrate to anhydrate were analyzed for each drug using a spin echo and inversion recovery pulse sequence. It was possible to extract a signal that was specific for the water in the hydrates so that differentiation from anhydrous solid forms was enabled. Excellent calibrations were obtained for quantitative analysis of hydrate/anhydrate mixtures and predicted water contents were in good agreement with water amounts determined in desiccator sorption experiments. TD-NMR was therefore found to be a suitable new technique to characterize pharmaceutical hydrates in a non-invasive and hence sample-sparing manner. Quantification of the hydrate content in pharmaceutical mixtures appears highly attractive for product development and process monitoring. TD-NMR provides here a valuable and complementary technique to established process analytics, such as for example Raman spectroscopy.