A Novel Co-Processed Excipient with Enhanced Direct Compression Functionality for Improved Diluent Performance in Ibuprofen Tablets

Recently, excipient development comprising a mixture of two or more materials assembled in a single frame by means of particle engineering, known as co-processed excipients, has gained enormous popularity. The study was undertaken to evaluate the suitability of a newly developed co-processed excipient, CPE (lactose 90%, mucin 5% and corn starch BP 5%) obtained as the optimized composition from the design of experiment (DOE) as a functional diluent in comparism with other diluents. Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) was carried out on the single and CPE components and further evaluated for their micromeritic properties, compressed into tablets by direct compression. The produced tablets were evaluated using British Pharmacopoeia methods. The data obtained from the different evaluation parameters containing the CPE revealed good flow properties (flow rate, angle of repose, carr’s index and hausner’s ratio were 2.02g/sec, 18.430, 3.98% and 1.04 respectively), most of the peaks of CPE in the final spectra were consistent with lactose and the tablets compared well with the reference standards. The study has shown the potentials of CPE as a directly compressible diluent in tablet formulation with enhanced functionality as well as comparing well with the available standards. Keywords: route, co-processed excipient, ibuprofen, diluent, tablets.