The research question addressed by this cluster is: What are the mechanisms whereby pharmaceutical solids can be produced with predefined characteristics? The objective is to rationally design solid-state pharmaceutical materials in the required physical and chemical forms to meet the demands of advanced formulation and drug delivery systems.

SCHEMATIC OF SSPC MEMBERSHIP

As one of the most highly regulated industries, the pharmaceutical sector has significant and costly problems with the lack of reproducibility of solid-state forms. Costs increase when material must be reprocessed or discarded because a product is outside of its regulated specification due to failure of a unit operation. The lack of a fundamental scientific understanding of phenomena such as crystallisation, phase transformations, polymorphism, mechanism of desolvation and physical forces involved in precipitation, drying, milling and compression lie at the heart of these problems.

The Solid State Pharmaceuticals Cluster intends to provide the necessary skill set to comprehensively investigate pharmaceutical solids by bringing together complementary academic and industrial groupings from the disciplines of Chemistry, Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceutical Technology, Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. These groups have expertise in process modelling and design, scale-up, computational fluid dynamics, in situ solution and solid-phase monitoring, crystallography and powder characterisation