Abstract
Purpose: We hypothesize that ultrasonication can accelerate solute crystallization in freeze-concentrates. Our objective is to demonstrate ultrasonication as a potential predictive tool for evaluating physical stability of excipients in frozen solutions. Methods: The crystallization tendencies of lyoprotectants (trehalose, sucrose), carboxylic acid buffers (citric, tartaric, malic, and acetic) and an amino acid buffer (histidine HCl) were studied. Aqueous solutions of buffers, lyoprotectants and mixtures of the two were cooled from room temperature to -20°C and sonicated to induce solute crystallization. The crystallized phases were identified by X-ray diffractometry (laboratory or synchrotron source). Results: Sonication accelerated crystallization of trehalose dihydrate in frozen trehalose solutions. Sonication also enhanced solute crystallization in tartaric (200 mM; pH 5), citric (200 mM pH 4) and malic (200 mM; pH 4) acid buffers. At lower buffer concentrations, longer annealing times following sonication were required to facilitate solute crystallization. The time for crystallization of histidine HCl progressively increased as a function of sucrose concentration. The insonation period required to effect crystallization also increased with sucrose concentration. Conclusions: Sonication can substantially accelerate solute crystallization in the freeze-concentrate. Ultrasonication may be useful in assessing the crystallization tendency of formulation constituents used in long term frozen storage and freeze-drying.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1512-1524 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Pharmaceutical research |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The work was partially supported by the William and Mildred Peters endowment fund. Parts of this work were carried out in the Characterization Facility, University of Minnesota, which receives partial support from NSF through the MRSEC program. Use of the Advanced Photon Source, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the U.S. DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
Keywords
- buffer
- crystallization
- frozen
- lyoprotectant
- ultrasonication