Profile the sensory characteristics of your products (excipient, API or finished product) using an EXPERT panel

What is an excipient?

Medicines are formulated to contain active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), as well as inactive ingredients called excipients.

Excipients are major components of almost all medicines and have many roles in their formulation. They can help to provide stability and bioavailability of the API, help during the manufacturing process, as well as assist in maintaining the integrity of the medicine during storage.

While these roles are vital in the overall formulation and use of a medicine, at SRL we recognise that excipients can also have a role to play in the palatability of medicine and that understanding the sensory characteristics of excipients is essential to that.

The influence of an excipients’ flavour/taste as well as its texture/mouthfeel and ultimately its impact on palatability on the final medicinal product during consumption should never be overlooked and in some cases, may even be greater than for the API itself.

Throughout the process of formulation, from choosing what excipients to use and at what level, consideration should be given to understanding their sensory impact. It is also important to note that while functional properties of excipients from different suppliers may effectively be the same, this is seldom the case for their sensory profile.

As a first step in answering this question, it important that manufactures of excipients understand the sensory characteristics of their products, they need to be able to effectively measure their flavour/taste and texture/mouthfeel characteristics. Understanding the individual components and building blocks (e.g. excipients & APIs), of any formulation is ultimately key to developing a successful and palatable medicine that patients will comply with its consumption.

At SRLPharma, we have many years’ experience profiling the sensory characteristics of excipients.

  • Use SRLPharmas’ expert panel to profile your excipients.
  • Show how the sensory profile your excipient is different to that of your competitor.