The Effect of Various Solid Formulations on the in Vitro Drug Release Properties of a Novel Rumen Drug - Capstone Project Example

The paper "The Effect of Various Solid Formulations on the in Vitro Drug Release Properties of a Novel Rumen Drug' is a great example of a capstone project on medical science. The veterinary market is cost-sensitive and farmers will only treat an animal if they get a return on their investment. Thus the cost of treatment must be low, which in turn means that the product used to deliver the drug must also be low cost. The final cost of a product is related to the cost of ingredients and the manufacturing method used to produce the product.

This situation means that the biggest challenge facing a veterinary formulation scientist is to invent, research, and commercialize a product using only cheap excipients and/or utilize existing manufacturing processes. Recently a new delivery system was invented (Ahmed & Kasraian,pp.871-882, 2002) It comprised of a stack of 10 tablets contained within a plastic container with wings on it to aid retention in the animal (Figure Figure 1:New rumen delivery system (I will attach it later) The combination of the use of tablets and an injection-molded container was considered a cheap combination to formulate the product.

However, in this project, we investigate if the manufacturing process can be made even cheaper by reducing the number of steps involved in the manufacturing process. The hypothesis is that the drug release rate from the delivery device is independent of the dosage form type used. If this is proved to be the case, then it would be a significant finding since it would lower the overall manufacturing cost of the rumen product making it a viable commercial investment. Aims and Objectives To manufacture a tablet a number of steps have to be undertaken.

These are shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: Steps involved in the manufacture of tablets. Objectives of the research The overall objective of the project is to determine if the new rumen delivery system can be simply loaded with either the mixed powder or with granules and subsequently to determine if the different dosage forms result in the same rate of release of drug from the delivery system compared to that of tablets. If this is the case, the number of steps required to manufacture the product would be reduced and the product would be manufactured at a lower cost improving its potential as a commercial product.