Smooth touch from Dow Corning

A new family of qualified silicone-based excipients for topical pharmaceutical formulations was launched onto the global market by Dow Corning. The Silky Touch product range is said to offer enhanced aesthetics and improved delivery of the api.

'Conventional topical pharmaceutical formulations can be greasy and difficult to apply, which can result in poor compliance by patients,' said Dr Christophe Sene, technical service specialist for Dow Corning Europe. 'But products formulated with Silky Touch excipients have non-greasy, non-tacky and non-glossy aesthetics.'

Furthermore, because they are more substantive than most common organic excipients, they provide an ideal environment for increased bioavailability of the active ingredients, enabling drug diffusion and release rates to be controlled more easily.

'Because of these properties, it may be possible to formulate with a broader range of drugs, including those that have lower activities,' Sene explained. 'The resulting topical products can be more cost efficient without sacrificing their effectiveness.'

An added benefit is that silicone wax can be processed at lower temperatures than typical organic wax and the silicone emulsifier can be used to make water-in-oil creams. As a result, says Dow Corning, it is possible to design products that are easy to formulate and cost-effective to produce.

There are 10 products in the Silky Touch range to cover a range of topical pharmaceutical formulations, including creams, emulsions, lotions, gels, ointments, sprays and sticks. Six of the products were previously available in Europe only but are now being made available in North and South America and Asia. The remaining four made their global debut at CphI. They are: