Expanding such tools to pharmaceutical development has many benefits.
By Daniel Skomski, Matthew S. Lamm, Wei Xu, Jason K. Cheung, Ronald L. Smith, Allen C. Templeton, and Yongchao Su, Merck & Co., Inc.
The implementation of imaging in pharmaceutical sciences has significantly advanced in the last decade. It has become an indispensable set of analytical tools for the in-depth investigation of pharmaceutical materials to facilitate and optimize formulation design. To mitigate key physical and chemical challenges with these formulations, scientists seek physiochemical information in-situ with adequate spatial, chemical, and temporal resolution. Advanced imaging and microscopy methods are now being applied to these challenges. The need for micro- and nanoimaging techniques has been further catalyzed by the increased utilization of a diverse and novel repertoire of drug delivery modalities in modern pharmaceutical development (Figure 1).