Ceapro Announces Technical Successes on Supercritical Fluid Drying Technology
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Dr. Bernhard Seifried from Ceapro presented the latest results obtained from one of Ceapro's research programs using a supercritical drying technology. The presentation entitled "Supercritical Fluid Drying of High Molecular Weight Biopolymers for Particle Formulation and Delivery of Bioactives" was held under the Pharmaceutical Applications stream of the International Symposium on supercritical fluids currently ongoing in San Francisco at the Hyatt Regency hotel.
The goal from using this technology is to produce dry powder formulations of certain Ceapro products currently sold as liquid formulations. From a technological perspective, the process conditions facilitate the production of preservative free, sterile products, powders, fibres, and agglomerates. The wide range of very fine structures this technology produces facilitates easy solubilisation which is essential for many drying technologies to be successful.
"While we have initially presented this technology as a powdered beta glucan project, we realize that this technology might offer much more by becoming a platform suitable for many water-soluble products.", stated Gilles Gagnon, CEO of Ceapro. "With its potential usage for impregnation, coating and encapsulation of Ceapro's bio-actives, it is expected that this technology would enable Ceapro to offer product formulations which would be suitable for the transition to the functional food, nutraceutical and potentially pharmaceutical areas", added Mr. Gagnon.
Thus far the technology has been scaled up to pilot scale at the BioFoodTech Centre in Charlottetown Prince Edward Island. Each scale up process requires lead time to custom manufacture equipment that has been designed by Ceapro scientists. "Each step of our scale up has gone exceptionally well and this project has been a technical success to this point", said Dr. Bernhard Seifried, research scientist at Ceapro. To date the beta glucan purity has exceeded 90% and by adjusting the process conditions we have produced dried beta glucan in the form of microfibrils, sponge type material, and free flowing powder, which all show excellent solubilisation properties", added Dr Seifried. The next scale up runs are scheduled for the next quarter when Ceapro intends to produce multiple kilogram quantities of dried powder for evaluation by a food company. Product samples have also been sent to a specialty pharmaceutical company for testing.
"We congratulate Dr Seifried on his success to date on this totally novel technology. The beta glucan products produced thus far are beyond our expectations. Furthermore, applications of this technology might extend beyond Ceapro's current products making this technology potentially attractive as an out-license candidate to third parties requiring challenging drying solutions. We look forward to continuing an aggressive path toward commercialization", added Mr. Gagnon.
