The sound of tablets during coating erosion, disintegration, deaggregation and dissolution

This research aims to address a gap in our understanding of the mechanisms by which pharmaceutical tablets achieve highly reproducible and predictable drug release. The present industrial and regulatory practice is centred around tablet dissolution, i.e. what follows disintegration, yet the vast majority of problems that are found in formulation dissolution testing can be traced back to the erratic disintegration behaviour of the medicinal product. It is only due to the distinct lack of quantitative measurement techniques for disintegration analysis that this situation arises. Current methods involve costly, and time-consuming test equipment, resulting in a need for more simple, green and efficient methods which have the potential to enable rapid development and to accelerate routine solid drug formulation dissolution and disintegration testing. In this study, we present a novel approach to track several sequential tablet dissolution processes, including coating erosion, disintegration, deaggregation and dissolution using Broadband Acoustic Resonance Dissolution Spectroscopy (BARDS). BARDS, in combination with minimal usage of UV spectroscopy, can effectively track these processes. The data also show that a solid oral dose formulation has an intrinsic acoustic signature which is specific to the method of manufacture and excipient composition.