Sustained-release formulations have been widely developed to improve the therapeutic performance of drugs, in particular, to increase pharmacological efficacy and reduce side effects.
•Tests with coloured pastes show that fines do not attach preferentially at pellet waist. •New ‘dumb-bellity’ measure to quantify the formation of dumb-bells •Spheronisation time increases with mass of charge until overmassing occurs. •Tests with calcium carbonate as model API exhibit the same behaviour. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003259101400864X