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Quality Granulations Using only Cold Water and Spress^® Pregelatinized Corn Starch NF

Solid dosage forms such as tablets or capsules are the simplest way to provide an accurate dosage of drug products, vitamins, minerals or any other type of active ingredients. Many of these Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API), supplements and herbal ingredients occur as powders and therefore do not lend themselves easily to direct-compression tableting. These powders commonly have uneven or very fine particle size distribution resulting in poor flow and compaction properties. Granulation processes are often employed by manufacturers to improve the processing characteristics of these powders destined for tablets or capsules.

Various manufacturing techniques are used to produce these free-flowing, compressible granules including fluid-bed granulation, high-intensity granulation, rotor granulation and continuous granulation. A strong binder is required in any of these processes to produce a high-quality finished granulation with the desired flow and compaction properties. However, the binding properties of the excipient must be balanced by good disintegration and dissolution properties of the finished solid dosage form.

Spress^® Pregelatinized Corn Starch NF, manufactured by Grain Processing Corporation, allows flexibility in wet-granulation formulas. With the range of pregelatinization available in this product line, the formulator can select the starch right for their particular granulation process and the final product desired. Spress^® Pregelatinized Corn Starches NF are free-flowing powders with low dusting characteristics, making them easy to work with in production. The starch can be used in the binding solution or added dry to the API and granulated with water or a binding solution.

Traditional starch granulations require starch paste preparation which takes time and presents a hazard to the operator in terms of heating and handling of hot liquids. Cold-water granulation is an ideal alternative, but many binders are not strong enough to result in a favorable final product.

Spress^® B825 Pregelatinized Corn Starch NF, manufactured by Grain Processing Corporation, is a fully pregelatinized starch with unique binding properties.  It has been specifically designed for wet-granulation formulas, especially cold-water granulations, so quality granulations can be made using only cold water as the binding solution. Using Spress^® B825 Pregelatinized Corn Starch NF eliminates solution preparation and simplifies the granulation process which accelerates production resulting in cost reduction.

Grain Processing Corporation will be exhibiting at SupplySide West in Las Vegas, NV, on October 12-13, 2011, and at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) in Washington DC, on October 24-26, 2011. We invite you to stop by our booth to discuss our Spress^® Pregelatinized Corn Starch NF or any other GPC products.

For more information on these products, please visit the Pharmaceutical/Nutraceutical section of our website.