"Investigation of Heat and Mass Transfer in Freeze Drying
​of Cartridges / Dual Chamber Syringes"
February 7th, 2019 at 12:00 PM EDT - At your laptop or mobile device.

WEBINAR ABSTRACT: Freeze drying is the process of removing water from biodegradable pharmaceutical products by means of sublimation. Conventionally, a vial containing the solution is taken to subzero temperatures (-40C), and then vacuum and heat are applied to promote the sublimation. The final product is a cake that must be reconstituted, by adding diluent from a separate container, to get prepared for administration.

Alternatively, one can use a dual chamber syringe which has a chamber for the cake product and one for the diluent. Through a similar procedure, the solution will be converted to a cake product in the associated chamber. However, differently from the case of vials, reconstitution occurs only using the diluent inside the other chamber and no additional container will be needed for this purpose.

This has two main advantages. First, fewer steps are required for preparation and injection when compared to traditional vial/syringe combinations, with no need for multiple needles or transfers devices. Second, the all-in-one design allows precise dosing and helps to minimize reconstitution errors.

Despite these advantages, DCS containers are not yet widely used, partly because no robust models yet exist that can accurately describe the freeze drying phenomena in these containers. One may attempt to leverage the existing heat and mass transfer models developed for vials. However, due to the different geometry of cartridges and vials, it is critical that significant modifications are made to these models before they can be applied. Herein, we report on the investigation of heat and mass transfer of a simple existing holder system for freeze drying in cartridges and dual chamber syringes, aimed at investigating whether vial model can be adopted for dual chamber syringes.

​Further, we will introduce a new holder design to improve the current heat and mass transfer properties. Novel and sophisticated monitoring pieces of apparatus are designed and incorporated to the new holder to facilitate data acquisition practices.

About Our Speaker: Dr. Pouya Tavousi

Pouya Tavousi

Pouya Tavousi, Lab Manager and Postdoc Researcher at REFINE Center, University of Connecticut.

Pouya Tavousi is a microscopist, image processing and machine learning expert, software developer and product designer. He has developed solutions and tools for academic and industrial users in the fields of aerospace and mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, and pharma.

Throughout my research career, I have focused on the development of state-of-the-art approaches for addressing one of the most challenging science problems, namely characterization and understanding the behavior of nanoscale biological systems as well as design, fabrication and manipulation of such systems. I have developed new techniques and computational and physical tools for studying biomolecular systems and the related manufacturing processes. My tools enable characterization, design and analysis of nanoscale biomolecular systems and facilitate the processes related to manufacturing such systems.

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