BASF has developed a plastic film that will further protect the company's pharmaceutical excipient polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) against oxygen ingress and thus oxidation.
Under the registered trade name Kollidon, PVP is used in tablets as a binding agent and disintegrant. It makes tablets a true high-tech product: as a binding agent it enables individual active ingredients of a tablet to form a homogenous entity and as a disintegrant it ensures that tablets break up in liquid and release the active ingredient quickly.
Boris Jenniches, from BASF's global business management PVP, said the patent pending film will enable BASF to offer customers products of a higher quality and consequently with improved patient safety.
PVP was developed in 1939 by chemist Walter Reppe, working in a BASF laboratory in Ludwigshafen. He used acetylene and pyrrolidone to produce a new monomer called vinylpyrrolidone, which in turn can be transformed into the polymer polyvinylpyrrolidone.
PVP can be used for a range of applications because it is soluble in water, but can also absorb large quantities of water. It will not irritate the skin and does not pose a health hazard. It is also temperature-resistant, pH-stable, nonionic and colourless.
