Modeling the migration behaviour of extractables from mono- and multi-layer polyolefin films to mathematically predict the concentration of leachable impurities in pharmaceutical drug products. Part 2: Conservative diffusion and partition coefficient determinations

Abstract

In the development of a pharmaceutical drug product packaging an important step is to demonstrate acceptable levels of leachable impurities migrating from the packaging material into the drug product during its shelf-life and therapeutic use. Such migration processes can be quantified either by analytical methods (which is often challenging and labor intensive) or (in many cases) through theoretical modeling, which is a reliable, quick and cost-effective method to forecast the level of leachable impurities in the packaged drug when the diffusion and partition coefficients are known. In the previous part, it was shown how these parameters can be determined experimentally and subsequent theoretical fitting of the results for a series of low and high molecular weight organic compounds (known leachables) in a series of polyolefin materials was performed. One of the interpretations of these results is that a theoretical calculation can be made only for organic compounds and materials whose diffusion/partition/solubility coefficients were determined experimentally and theoretical fitting was achieved. However, in practice there will be situations where other leachable compounds may have to be investigated. In such cases, strictly speaking, it would be necessary to perform the whole experimental and fitting procedure for the new compound before a proper theoretical modeling is possible. But this would make the theoretical calculation of a leaching process from a pharmaceutical packaging material a cumbersome and cost intensive procedure. To address this problem, the pools of diffusion and partition coefficients were used to develop an approach that allows the estimation, without any additional experimentation, of so-called ″conservative″ diffusion and partition coefficients for a much wider range of potential leachables in the polyolefin pharmaceutical packaging materials and aqueous solutions investigated previously.