Glass delamination(1) has become a bit of a hot topic in the area of parenterals over the past several years. Glass delamination is, indeed, a serious issue which can not only cause pharmaceutical companies millions of dollars in recalls, but also stands as a safety hazard to end users. Delamination is essentially the flaking off of the top layers of a glass surface into the liquid contents of a pharmaceutical vial, syringe, or other container. Numerous companies have experienced this issue, and have had to open investigations(2) to address the issue. The question is, how can we be proactive, rather than reactive, in addressing concerns with glass delamination? How can we minimize the risk of experiencing a delamination issue, in order to protect the welfare of end-users and uphold the quality of our products?
For the third consecutive year Gateway had the pleasure of exhibiting at the AAPS Annual Meeting, which was held this year in San Antonio, at the very large Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. AAPS members and attendees come from a wide range of areas within pharmaceutical drug development and biopharmaceuticals. In addition to offering free popcorn daily and an open bar on Tuesday night, this year, our focus was to promote analytical services that not only support drug product formulation development but also address manufacturing issues such as particulate contamination and source determination.
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, or FTIR, is a vibrational spectroscopy method which is based upon the measurement of specific frequencies which occur between chemical bonds in a given material. Interestingly, as materials may be unique in chemical nature, so are the infrared spectra which they yield, resulting in a unique “fingerprint” for a given material. As such, this makes FTIR a very resourceful tool for such things as:
