(510e) Simple Introductory Experiments Involving Pharmaceutical Engineering Concepts

Laboratory experiments exposing undergraduate students to topics in pharmaceutical engineering have been developed.  These experiments were created to be used in the lower level engineering curriculum and in outreach activities by introducing students to pharmaceutical terminology through basic science or engineering concepts.  The pharmaceutical concepts included: drug delivery, drug formulations, quality control, pharmacology, active ingredient function, and pharmaceutical processing.  Several example labs are described have included the following.  A reverse engineering lab consisted of the analysis of a common asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) drug delivery device, the Advair Diskus^®.   Through this lab students investigate how an active ingredient in particulate form can be delivered and repeatedly administered over a month dosage period.  Student can also compare this to the function of other orally inhaled asthma medicines.  Simple statistical analysis of solid dose drug tablets is an experiment quite useful for outreach activities in demonstrating quality control.  Antacid and an Alka-Seltzer^® effervescence reaction experiments tie together nicely basic chemistry principles and stoichiometric relationships.  Fundamental mass transfer experiments use novel strip film dosage forms to illustrate diffusion of novel drug delivery methods. This work is part of the educational outreach efforts of the NSF ERC for Structured Organic Particulate Systems.