Erin
Bell
Contact Info
Office: Bldg. 56-454
Phone: 617-253-0470
Fax: 617-258-6876
Email: erinbell@mit.edu
Education:
B.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison 2005
M.S. Chemical Engineering Practice, MIT 2008
Thesis Title:
Using Melt Extrusion to Acheive Tunable solid Dosage Forms
Research Description:
Pharmaceutical tablets are predominantly produced using processing techniques that were developed a hundred years ago. The process generally consists of many batch operations that rely heavily on experimental trial and error and little on scientific principle.
Melt extrusion is an alternative processing technique that operates continuously, reduces the total number of unit operations, allows for incorporation of difficult-to-process drug substances, and has the potential to achieve tablets of better quality and consistency compared to traditional methods.
Thus, our goal is to evaluate melt extrusion as a viable processing alternative and eventually expand our scientific knowledge such that we gain predictive capabilities of tablet characteristics, i.e., quality by design. This new knowledge will aid future process design thereby helping to reduce time and costs associated with pharmaceutical solid dosage form production.