Taste Masking Study

Situation: Our client requested a taste masking study to mask the taste of their drug as an oral powder for reconstitution as a suspension. The challenge was to provide a fast, aqueous dispersible vehicle that would not only be palatable and mask their drug taste, but that would also form a pharmaceutically acceptable suspension when mixed with the drug substance.

Task: We needed to formulate multiple placebo vehicles using a variety of flavors, sweeteners, suspending agents, and acidulants.

Action: Each of the formulated placebo vehicles were added to the drug substance to form an active suspension. The placebo vehicles were compared to the active suspensions using AlphaM.O.S.'s Astree electronic tongue technology. The electronic tongue was able to show which active suspension best matched the corresponding placebo vehicle indicating a good taste match was achieved.

Result: Using the electronic tongue technology, AAIPharma was able to quickly develop a taste masking vehicle for our client's drug substance without the safety concerns of human taste testing.