Versatile Capsule Filling Workstation…

Symyx Technologies Europe SA has announced that a Clinical Trial Phase 1 group within a pharmaceutical company has standardised upon the Powdernium® Workstation for automating pure drug active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) dispensing and binary blending with excipient into capsules.

The manual API dispensing and excipient blending techniques traditionally used by the Clinical Trial Phase 1 group were slow, inaccurate and were prone to cross-contamination. Driven by the need to reduce the time and costs associated with producing a drug product or formulation for Clinical Trial Phase 1 studies - Symyx Technologies were tasked with establishing an accurate process for automatically dispensing and blending the powders. The workstation solution needed to handle capsules of varying sizes and be able to handle a range of API and excipients without cross contamination.

Accurate capsule filling, particularly when dosing milligram amounts of powder, is critical for many pharmaceutical products. As a leading provider of integrated workflow improvement solutions, Symyx was able to provide the customer with a CFR Part11 compliant workstation solution for dispensing Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and excipients into capsules. Using separate dispensing heads, and a tray for capsule management, the Powdernium workstation has eliminated cross contamination. Designed to run unattended 24 / 7 the implementation of four Powdernium Capsule Filling Workstations has enabled the Clinical Trials Phase 1 group to achieve significant improvements in the throughput and accuracy of API dispensing and homogeneous blending together with an overall reduction in operating costs.

Combining accurate balance weighing, an advanced software algorithm and GMP compliant dispensing heads - Powdernium technology enables laboratories to precisely dispense and record the transferred weight of a very wide range of materials from low density to free-flowing, cohesive, micronised materials and more. Designed to provide unmatched versatility the Powdernium workstation enables precise, traceable and reproducible dispensing of sub-milligram (0.05mg) to gram quantities of materials into a wide range of containers including capsules, bottles, vials, tubes, microplates, reactor blocks and crucibles. State-of-the-art automation including robust XY and two Z-axis controls, allows the Powdernium workstation to run unattended operations speeding development, reducing costs and improving consistency. Fault tolerant and adaptive the intelligent Powdernium Easy-Dose software provides real-time data display and record storage (supports CFR Part 11 compliance) about the dispensing cycle including batch conditions and operating parameters. Using optimisation algorithms the Powdernium workstation is able to dynamically monitor and automatically control any variability in powder properties during the filling process. Incorporating Swiss precision mechanics, intelligent automation, simplicity of operation and a high level of reliability - a Powdernium workstation can be quickly installed and adding to your bottom line in just days.

Symyx Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMMX) enables companies in life sciences, chemicals and energy, and consumer and industrial products to transform scientific R&D and achieve extraordinary breakthroughs in productivity and return on investment. Symyx scientific information management enables scientists to design, execute, analyse, and report experimental results faster, easier, and less expensively. Symyx microscale, parallel experimentation enables a single scientist to rapidly explore a broad experimental space and develop comprehensive data sets in days - not weeks or months. Symyx contract research delivers these advantages on a customer-directed project basis and enables companies to increase R&D productivity, agility, and flexibility.