Roquette, a provider of plant-based ingredients and pharmaceutical and nutraceutical excipients, opened a pharmaceutical innovation center, near Philadelphia. Staffed with a team of research, application and formulation experts, the $25M center will be a training and collaboration hub for pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturers around the world. With a focus on optimizing patient experience with next-generation oral dosage forms, the US facility complements the research activities of Roquette’s existing pharma innovation centers in France and Singapore.
Like Roquette’s other innovation centers, the US facility is dedicated to furthering the field of pharmaceutical science through cross-industry collaboration, research-led product development and a drive to improve patients’ lives. Training, troubleshooting and scale-up advice will be priorities at the facility. Planned topics for the first wave of training workshops include selecting excipients for controlled release dosage forms, enhancing bioavailability, and formulating effective orally dispersible and chewable tablets. In addition to formulation-focused sessions, the center will host manufacturing-oriented seminars, such as improving wet/dry granulation processes and strategies for effective continuous manufacturing.
Underpinning these training sessions and the center’s primary research projects is a suite of the pharmaceutical processing, testing and manufacturing equipment. Roquette’s customers and partners can tap into technologies such as a R&D continuous manufacturing simulator, compaction simulator, hot-melt extruder, advanced dissolution and particle size testing (laser diffraction), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and modulated differential scanning calorimetry (mDSC) to refine and improve formulations. The site is also stocked with new granulation, blending and coating equipment, alongside high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis capabilities.