Twin screw granulation – review of current progress

Twin screw granulation (TSG) is a new process of interest to the pharmaceutical community that can continuously wet granulate powders, doing so at lower liquid concentrations and with better product consistency than found by a high shear batch mixer. A considerable body of research has evolved over the short time since this process was introduced but generally with little comparison of results. A certain degree of confidence has been developed through these studies related to how process variables and many attributes of machinery configuration will affect granulation but some major challenges still lay ahead related to scalability, variations in the processing regimes related to degree of channel fill and the impact of wetting and granulation of complex powder formulations. This review examines the current literature for wet granulation processes studied in twin screw extrusion machinery, summarizing the influences of operational and system parameters affecting granule properties as well as strives to provide some practical observations to newly interested users of the technique.     

Cell-Free Synthesis of Selenoproteins in High Yield and Purity for Selective Protein Tagging

The selenol group of selenocysteine is much more nucleophilic than the thiol group of cysteine. Selenocysteine residues in proteins thus offer reactive points for rapid post-translational modification. Herein, we show that selenoproteins can be expressed in high yield and purity by cell-free protein synthesis by global substitution of cysteine by selenocysteine. Complete alkylation of solvent-exposed selenocysteine residues was achieved in 10 minutes with 4-chloromethylene dipicolinic acid (4Cl-MDPA) under conditions that left cysteine residues unchanged even after overnight incubation. Gd^III−Gd^III distances measured by double electron–electron resonance (DEER) experiments of maltose binding protein (MBP) containing two selenocysteine residues tagged with 4Cl-MDPA-Gd^III were indistinguishable from Gd^III−Gd^III distances measured of MBP containing cysteine reacted with 4Br-MDPA tags.     

Defining Dry Eye from a Clinical Perspective

Over the past decades, the number of patients with dry eye disease (DED) has increased dramatically. The incidence of DED is higher in Asia than in Europe and North America, suggesting the involvement of cultural or racial factors in DED etiology. Although many definitions of DED have been used, discrepancies exist between the various definitions of dry eye disease (DED) used across the globe. This article presents a clinical consensus on the definition of DED, as formulated in four meetings with global DED experts. The proposed new definition is as follows: “Dry eye is a multifactorial disease characterized by a persistently unstable and/or deficient tear film (TF) causing discomfort and/or visual impairment, accompanied by variable degrees of ocular surface epitheliopathy, inflammation and neurosensory abnormalities.” The key criteria for the diagnosis of DED are unstable TF, inflammation, ocular discomfort and visual impairment. This definition also recommends the assessment of ocular surface epitheliopathy and neurosensory abnormalities in each patient with suspected DED. It is easily applicable in clinical practice and should help practitioners diagnose DED consistently. This consensus definition of DED should also help to guide research and clinical trials that, to date, have been hampered by the lack of an established surrogate endpoint.