Time and again, pharmaceutical companies are faced with the need to develop a single dosage form that produces a constant blood plasma concentration at an effective level over a prolonged period of time. Often, the solution will be an extended release formulation that delivers the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) to the body slowly, overcoming the need for patients to take multiple doses throughout the day.
In many cases, a single dose of an extended release formulation taken at the start of the day successfully achieves sustained blood plasma concentrations at levels that would otherwise require several immediate release doses. Extended release formulations exhibit a number of different properties to immediate release dosage forms, and while these different characteristics create new opportunities for manufacturers, they also present a number of additional challenges that must be overcome.
This article was published in Tablets & Capsules, September 2017, Vol 15 No 6.