PhD: Attrition of pharmaceutical powders

Bristol-Myers Squibb is a leading global Pharmaceutical Company. It is active in developing and marketing novel therapies in the areas of immuno-oncology, cardiovascular health, cancer and fibrosis, amongst others. In the past few years it has had numerous approvals for new medicines and has an active pipeline. Last year it invested over $4 billion in research & development. The majority of medicines under development at Bristol-Myers Squibb are intended for oral administration. It is necessary in the development of most oral dosage forms (tablets or capsules) to utilise a number of unit process steps (e.g. blending, milling and granulation) all of which can affect the characteristics of our drug particles. Mitigating adhesion / sticking of active pharmaceutical intermediate (API) to manufacturing surfaces, such as tablet dies, is an area of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Sticking of drug to tooling requires the process to be shutdown, resulting in increased manufacturing costs and lower yields.

Considerable work has been applied in order to understand the propensity of API particles to adhere to surfaces such as tablet tooling during manufacture. Much of the work to date has involved measuring the particle / powder characteristics of the input material in order to determine the critical material attributes that correlate to the observed issue. The project will investigate the propensity of materials to undergo such process induced attrition, to track particles throughout a process stream and therein investigate the possibility to measure the ‘at surface’ particle characteristics, thereby develop a true understanding of sticking risks. Such an understanding could then be used to investigate ways to predict risks based upon an understanding of the true critical material attributes.

Funding Notes

Candidates must have at least a 2(1) in a relevant science or engineering discipline Applications from candidates with 2(2) and an MSc or substantial relevant industrial experience are also welcome. Applicants should email their c.v. to r.w.greenwood@bham.ac.uk


Closing Date 31 July 2016