Cedrine de Backere

Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology
Ottergemsesteenweg 460
B-9000 Gent(Belgium)
Tel. : +32-9-264.81.18
E-mail : cedrine.deBackere@ugent.be

Biography

Pharm. Cedrine de Backere graduated as pharmacist in 2017 from Ghent University where she obtained her master in Drug Development with great distinction. For her Master’s thesis, she evaluated the application of UPLC-MS for the determination of zearalenone and zaralenone-14-glyuoside in pigs at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. In September 2017, she started her PhD research on the optimization of tablet manufacturing, focusing on the correlation between small-scale and large-scale tablet manufacturing in order to facilitate scale-up and on external lubrication during tableting.

Summary of Research Project(s)

As tablets account for more than 80% of all pharmaceutical preparations cost- and time-efficient development of a tablet formulation is essential. Specifically the transition from small-scale tablet manufacturing towards full-scale manufacturing is challenging as process settings between both conditions cannot automatically be transferred. This project aims to correlate the observations during small-scale tablet manufacturing, using the Styl’One Evolution (Medelpharm, Beynost, France) compaction simualator, with the tableting conditions during full-scale tableting, using the ModulTM P (GEA Pharma Systems, CourtoyTM, Halle, Belgium) rotary tablet press, focusing on the impact of process settings during tableting on critical quality aspects of tablets. This will facilitate scale-up of tablet manufacturing within the pharmaceutical industry, thus improving the efficiency of drug development and reducing the time-to-market of a new drug product formulated as a tablet. Additionally, scale-up of additional technologies implemented on a tableting machine such as an external lubrication system requires specific attention. Applying external lubrication, a lubricant is sprayed directly on the tooling of the tablet press by a pressurized nozzle. This type of lubrication is typically used to avoid a reduction of the tensile strength and an increase of the disintegration time and dissolution time of lubricant sensitive formulations.