Modern formulators demand pharma excipients to do more than just one thing. They need multifunctional excipients that reduce formulation complexity, while playing a flavourable role in product’s efficacy. This shift has created a way for multiple multi-functional excipients.
In this blog, we walk through the key trends shaping pharma excipient science today, from tablet binder powders and super-disintegrants to ready mix film coating for tablets. Let us start by understanding in detail about multi functional excipients.
Pharma Manufacturer’s Move Towards Multi-functional Excipients:
To understand the concept of multi-functional excipients, let’s revise what excipients are. Excipients are materials included in a drug, apart from the active pharmaceutical ingredient. This includes emollients, emulsifiers, thickeners, stabilizers, solvents, preservatives, buffering agents etc. Film coating excipients are non-active ingredients used specifically in the coating layer of a dosage form (such as tablets or capsules) to form and support the film coat.
Traditional pharma excipients used to serve only purpose each. This means the number of ingredients in a drug were much more. While modern pharma manufacturing favours a single excipient delivering multiple value to the drug. This is what multi-functional excipients are.
Mindset Shift of Drug Manufacturers Towards Multi-functional Excipients:
To be honest, the concept of a multi-functional excipient isn’t entirely new. HPMC film coating has been doing double (and triple) duty for years. But what’s changed is how deliberately formulators are now selecting excipients with multi-functionality in mind from day one.
The major reason for this mindset shift is manufacturing efficiency. Every extra excipient in a formulation adds complexity of sourcing, testing, compatibility studies, regulatory justification. If one excipient can act as both a binder in wet granulation and a film former in coating, that’s a significant process simplification.
Moreover, the regulatory expectations have also tightened around excipient characterization. Formulators are demanding excipients, including film coating excipients that reduce batch-to-batch variation and improve manufacturing consistency during blending, granulation, compression, and coating.That kind of scrutiny tends to favor materials that have tiger specifications, lower impurity levels, consistent particle size, predictable flow and compression behaviour.
Trends in Multi-functional excipients:
The growing demand for efficient, scalable, and patient-friendly formulations is accelerating the adoption of multifunctional excipients. As a top excipient manufacturer in India, we have observed these 5 trends in multi-functional excipients.
Trend 1 – HPMC:
Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose (HPMC tablet coating) exemplifies multi-functionality. It functions simultaneously as a tablet binder powder, a film-forming agent, and a release modifier, with its behavior fine-tuned by viscosity grade selection.
At lower viscosity grades (3–50 cps), HPMC works well in wet granulation and immediate-release tablet coating. At higher viscosities , it helps with extended and controlled release matrices, where its gel-forming properties govern drug diffusion.
This is exactly the grade philosophy behind Novocoat, Novo Excipient’s HPMC tablet coating line: Novocoat spans from low-viscosity grades, such as Novocoat N-3, N-5, N-6 and N-15 , that are ideal for wet granulation and immediate-release tablet coating. The high-viscosity grades, such as, Novocoat NE-4M, NE-10M, NE-15M, and NE-100M works well for sustained and controlled release applications. The K Chemistry grades extend this further into modified-release territory.
Trend 2 – PVP:
Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) has been a pharmaceutical tablet binder standard for decades, but its role has expanded as solubilizer in amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs), a dissolution enhancer for BCS Class II drugs, a lyophilization excipient, and a suspension stabilizer.
The Novodone range within the Novo Series mirrors this multi-application positioning with the five K-value grades.
Trend 3: Super – Crospovidone:
Crospovidone’s, originally a superdisintegrant has proven to simultaneously improve tablet hardness, reduce friability, and deliver fast dissolution, without requiring a separate tablet binder powder.
The NOVODONE CR range from Novo Excipients is designed with different particle sizes to help formulators achieve specific tablet properties during manufacturing. This empowers the formulators with better control over tablet performance, surface finish, hardness, and manufacturing efficiency. For example, NOVODONE CR-S has very fine particles, which help create smoother and harder film-coated tablets, especially useful in high-speed tablet compression processes.
Trend 4 – HPC:
L-HPC is increasingly recognized for simultaneous binder and disintegrant activity. This combination reduces the need for separate superdisintegrant inclusion in some formulations.
The Novo Excipients Novocel LH range includes different grades of L-HPC, with each grade designed for a specific manufacturing need. For example, Novocel LH-11 is mainly used in direct compression tablets. It helps prevent capping (film coated tablet top layer breaking off) and also supports fast disintegration.
Trend 5 – Copovidone:
Copovidone can be used as a film former, solid dispersion carrier, and moisture barrier. In hot melt extrusion and spray-drying processes, copovidone’s combination of good adhesion, elasticity, and moisture barrier properties outperforms straight PVP in many controlled-release and solubility-enhancement applications.
Novodone VA (Copovidone) is a multifunctional polymer that can perform multiple roles within the same formulation.At lower concentrations, it works as a tablet coating solution. At slightly higher concentrations, it acts as a binder in both direct compression and wet granulation formulations.
Multi-functional Excipients For Formulation Success
Multi-functional excipients help pharmaceutical manufacturers to
- Simplify formulation design
- Improve manufacturing efficiency
- Reduce processing steps
- Achieve better tablet consistency
- Support direct compression and faster production
- Improve stability and performance
These excipients support high-speed and leaner film coated tablet manufacturing processes. Additionally, they are being developed with tighter specifications and lower impurity profiles. This reduces variability in tablet hardness, dissolution, weight variation, overall product quality or regulatory recalls.
Conclusion:
Formulation development is all about experimenting with your excipients. As pharmaceutical manufacturing becomes more advanced, multifunctional excipients will continue to play a critical role in simplifying development while improving product performance. Upgrading to multifunctional excipients may require some investment but formulation and manufacturing becomes less complex.
Simplify drug manufacturing and formulation development with multifunctional excipient solutions from the Novo Series. Connect with Novo Excipients, pharmaceutical excipient manufacturer and supplier to learn more.