We’re running a programme of technical and open innovation workshops and collaborative R&D projects for the benefit of companies involved in formulation. To help us decide what we should concentrate on we’ve tried to divide up formulation science and technology into a number of themes. We started with the formulation foresighting and roadmapping exercise we developed over the past few years and built in further feedback from companies and other organisations. At the end of this we came up with seven themes where there are significant opportunities and challenges. These are listed below with some reasons why we think they are important.

We think it’s a great time to innovate in formulation. Let us know what you think – are your areas of interest covered or have we missed out anything important?

Formulation for improved delivery

Getting the most out of actives or formulated products means formulating for optimal delivery. Whether delivering an active pharmaceutical ingredient to its target, delivering a personal care ingredient to the skin or an agrochemical product to and through the plant, getting the product to the right area at the right time is crucial.

Formulation stability

It’s no good formulating an optimally performing product if its stability is compromised. Formulated products must be stable to chemical, physical or biological degradation. Unstable products lead to economic loss and wastage, which is environmentally unfriendly too. Coming up with the tools for optimising, predicting and measuring formulation stability is equally important for products in consumer markets as it is for industrial products.

Formulation of/with natural, renewable or bio-derived ingredients

A desire for products with a sustainable life-cycle is leading to an increased interest in using ingredients from natural and sustainable sources. This places new challenges on the formulator – ensuring that complex and sensitive ingredients can be properly characterised, specified and formulated for optimum cost-performance.

High throughput and experimental design methods for formulation

New product development via novel formulations can be a rapid and cost effective way of freshening a product portfolio. However traditional “one at a time” experimentation is an inefficient way of exploring experimental space to find the best formulation. High throughput experimentation through robotics and miniaturisation allows a much wider range of experimental conditions to be explored and advances in methodology allow for simultaneous optimisation of multiple performance parameters.

Modelling for faster/more robust formulation development

Building models and simulations of atomic and molecular systems, as well as modelling macroscale properties, has become more or less routine. Such modelling methods allow experimenters to predict behaviour before or instead of doing an experiment. Now there is a real push to extend modelling capability to “mesoscale” systems (e.g. crystalline solids, surfaces, particles and multi-particle systems). For the first time this will allow formulation properties to be modelled and predicted effectively.

Characterisation methods for formulation

Advances in the characterisation of multiphase systems and of surfaces have been significant in recent years. Historically, formulated products have been complex mixtures where “inputs” and “outputs” have been connected by empirical observation and assumed relationships. Now these complex systems can be unravelled with modern particle and surface characterisation methods – for the first time we can actually describe quantitatively what we have made. This leads to a leap in understanding – and the prospect of improved products and processes.

Improved process and production technology for formulation

Formulation is no longer a matter of simple mixing and milling – we now have the technology to construct uniform and precisely defined particulate systems for instance. Furthermore on-line measurement and process control are becoming routine, helping us to make products and processes more robust and reproducible.

© Intelligent Formulation Limited 2010

Jim Bullock, Intelligent Formulation Ltd  jim.bullock@intelligentformulation.org

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