Piramal Enterprises' Pharma Solutions business, a leading Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO), has added development/commercial scale roller compaction technology to its Sellersville, Pennsylvania drug product facility.

The addition of the Gerteis Macro-pactor equipment, which is designed to handle both development and commercial-scale roller compaction, enhances the site's dry granulation and scale-up capabilities.

Market data indicates that more than 20 per cent of the new chemical entities being developed use roller compaction technology in their development and/or commercialisation.

In addition, roller compaction is an excellent technology for processing certain active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The densification of dry blended powders is a critical capability that is required to handle products with poor API flow properties and instances where the API is moisture sensitive.

Wet granulation is sometimes used to overcome these challenges, but many APIs are not amenable to wet granulation. In such cases, roller compaction provides a viable option to densify material and generate granules that can be further processed into capsules or tablets.