Dow foam technology licensed to BMS

Dow Wolff Cellulosics, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company, has announced a commercial contract with Bristol-Myers Squibb to use Dow's foam granulation technology in the development and manufacture of tablets intended for clinical and commercial use.

According to Dow, the inherently large surface areas of foams provide more efficient particle coverage than may be achieved by conventional spray technology. Elimination of spray nozzles removes some of the variables that are commonly encountered in spray granulation. It has been observed by Dow Wolff Cellulosics that particle size distribution is virtually unaffected by foam addition rate; this leads to a dramatic simplification in product scale-up. Drug content uniformity is also improved which is especially important in low-dose formulations.

"Tablets of all kinds have been manufactured the same way for nearly 50 years," said Philip Pilnik, global market manager for pharmaceuticals at Dow Wolff Cellulosics.

"This new technology allows for fast, simple, and cost effective granulation and could minimise issues associated with conventional processes. Without modifying existing equipment and using a low-cost foam generator, the manufacturing process uses less water than traditional wet granulation processing while rapidly coating particle surfaces and shortening processing time," he added.