The pharmaceutical industry must address the release of nonbiodegradable APIs into the environment, and the objective of this study was to develop a solution for treating an aqueous process waste stream that contained APIs and an organic solvent. It was found that solvent-stable nanofiltration (NF) membranes displayed the potential to produce a filtered stream suitable for discharge to the conventional chemical treatment plant, as well as enabling a 70% waste stream volume reduction. The developed process resulted in the installation of a system that would enable future production expansion to take place without an increase in energy requirements.

The permeation of drugs through the skin is compromised by the presence of polar functional groups such as thiols, alcohols, phenols, imides or amides. By transiently masking these polar functional groups as prodrugs the permeability of drugs containing these functional groups through the skin can be improved.

Lipid-based drug delivery systems — such as liposomes, micro-and nanoemulsions, self-emulsified drug delivery systems, and solid lipid micro-and nanoparticles — are becoming more popular because lipid materials are easily characterized, contain a high range of well-defined/tolerated surfactant molecules and can be developed for several administration routes.

The crystalline structure of pharmaceutical solids can sometimes be altered during processing. X-ray powder diffraction and near infrared spectroscopy can be used to determine the amorphous and crystalline content of a model substance. The two techniques' precision, accuracy, detection limit and the speed of analysis are compared.