In general the importance of an excellent “formulation” and of “formulators”, i.e. the persons, who design, develop and manufacture such “formulations”, is not widely recognised. This is the reason to publish these FORMULATION BLOGs.
The following anecdote illustrates the situation:
The author of this BLOG has invited the top scientist of a pharmaceutical company, who is responsible for all research activities. He agreed to give in front of my pharmacy students at the University a lecture on Research and Development of a new pharmaceutical drug, which included drug discovery, development of the medicinal product till its successful introduction on the market. He gave an excellent and fascinating presentation. However his presentation was completely focused on the drug substance. Thus at the end of his presentation a student was asking him about the formulation of this drug substance and about the task of an “industrial pharmacist”. He seemed to be surprised by this question, hesitated and then answered, that the job of an “industrial pharmacist” is very important, that the drug substance cannot be administred as it is, but has to be formulated to be administered as a medicinal product such as e.g. a tablet, that the correct amount of drug needs to be delivered at the rigth time to the right site in the body to become effective. He did forget to mention, that the best drug is absolutely useless, in case of a wrong formulation, which may have such a poor bioavaliability, that not enough drug substance may reach the site of action in the body.
It is true, that the drug substance is of primary importance, however the function of the "Formulation" should not be neglected. An excellent drug substance is wonderful and has its own beauty like a person. The beauty consists in the desired pharmacological effect. But as we know, nobody is perfect: each drug has its side effects. In this context the author of this BLOG explained to his students, that a "pharmaceutical formulation" has the same goal as a dress. A tailor made, well designed dress should increase the beauty of the respective person and cover up, what is not as beautiful. Thus side effects and other problems of the drug such as physicochemical stability etc of the drug should be minimized.
