Encap to develop hot melt extrusion capability

Published: 12-Oct-2012

In a partnership with Queen’s University Belfast


Encap Drug Delivery (EDD), a contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) based in Livingston, Scotland is to partner the School of Pharmacy at Queen's University Belfast to develop hot melt extrusion (HME) capabilities.

The partners have received funding from the UK’s Technology Strategy Board and the Scottish Government to form a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) on HME.

EDD says it has pioneered the application of liquid and semi-solid filled hard capsules for pharmaceutical products and has focused on gaining a sound scientific understanding of formulation. It now intends to apply a similar strategy to the development of HME products to differentiate itself from other CDMOs and aims to ‘promote robust and scalable manufacturing processes to enable clients to move quickly and efficiently through clinical development to registration and commercialisation’.

Encap’s r&d director Dr Jane Fraser said: ‘We are confident that we can establish and grow HME as a mainstream technology for poorly soluble molecules. We believe that this will be a valuable addition to the formulator's tool box and will fit well with our other enabling technologies.’

Dr Gavin Andrews added: ‘Our intention is that QUB will implement a robust, continuous melt extrusion process capable of engineering solid dispersions. In so doing we aim to complement existing soluble enhancement approaches through the addition of HME and thus bolster Encap’s technologies portfolio.’

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