This module aims at providing the most important features regarding the application of calorimetry and thermal analysis (mainly DSC) to food and pharmaceuticals, respectively.
This cycle of lessons will be focused on the identification of phase transitions occurring in food, bio materials and biological macromolecules, as well as on the comparison between the DSC profiles of pure active ingredient and an excipient with that of a 1:1w/w binary mixture, which can represent a model of a candidate drug for pharmaceutical industry.
The aim of this lesson is to provide the basic principles of using thermal analysis techniques (the most commonly used is DSC) to assess compatibility/incompatibility between an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and some excipient in a preformulation stage. To this end, 1:1 mass ratio binary mixture of API and each single excipient should be prepared. DSC experiments on pure components and binary mixtures are carried out. Comparison is made by assuming that the components are compatible with each other if the thermal properties (melting point, change in enthalpy, etc.) of blends are the sum of those of the individual components.
Bio-calorimetry is here presented following a general classification in two categories of systems i.e.
- Biological macromolecules in diluted solution (proteins, DNA, etc.)
- Bio-macromolecules in suspension and or in condensate phase (bio materials, food etc.)
By the end of the lesson the learners should have a panorama of calorimetric approaches applied to study the main transitions occurred in these systems.