The pharmaceutical industry develops, produces and markets drugs with the obligation to comply with legal and regulatory requirements. Laws and regulations regarding the testing, patenting and marketing of drugs are very strict and pharmaceutical groups must conduct thorough pre-clinical research and clinical trials. In pre-clinical studies it is essential to characterize the physicochemical properties of the new potential drug, such as stability and solubility. Further examinations deal with the suitability of the compound to be used as capsules, tablets, aerosols and other kinds of galenic formulations.
Application examples for tensiometry include:
• Surface free energy characterization of drugs to determine processibility and bioavailability of the product.
• Powders are used as bulk materials in many orally dozed drugs. Powder wettability is an important factor when explaining the solubility in drug delivery and can be measured with the powder wettability device of force tensiometer.
• Wettability of compressed powder tablets can be determined with contact angle measurement by using optical tensiometry.
• Biocompatibility of biomaterials can be studied with contact angle measurements to characterize cell adhesion onto the biomaterial.