Linking material properties to 1D-PBM parameters towards a generic model for twin-screw wet granulation

Abstract

Population balance models (PBM) have been widely used to model the twin-screw wet granulation (TSWG) in the continuous manufacturing of solid dosage forms. However, some knowledge gaps, such as material properties and process parameters, remain, which hampers the applicability of new drug developments. This work presents a hybrid model of a compartmental one-dimensional PBM and partial least squares (PLS) towards a generic model. The PBM that considers aggregation and breakage was calibrated with experimental data of ten different formulations with different liquid-to-solid ratios. The PLS models were built to predict the PBM parameters based on the material properties and liquid-to-solid ratio. The proposed model was validated by testing it with four formulations containing new active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) using maximum mean discrepancy. The model captured the peak of each granule size distribution for all formulations. This approach has the advantage that the hybrid model of the PBM and PLS can compute the resulting granule size distribution without granulation experiments. This work enhanced the applicability of PBM, which can reduce experimental efforts in new drug development.