Formulator’s Eye in Choosing of Specific Grade of an Excipient

By Masih Jaigirdar 

"Excipients are a very diverse set of materials and simple descriptions (such as “lactose” or “agar”) are simply not detailed enough to capture their complexity…. To specify the required characteristic of the excipients used in any given formulation, excipient descriptions need to include much more information than the common name or chemical composition that is used in today's standard reference texts. It is not unreasonable to suggest, therefore, that some type of systematic classification or naming system, a “taxonomy”, is required to specify exactly what excipients are to be used in any given formulation."  - Excipient Taxonomy for the 21st Century by Bruno C. Hancock and David J. Goldfarb in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences