Capsugel Showcases the Xcelolab At INTERPHEX 2012

Capsugel’s Missy Lowery discusses the applications for the new Xcelolab. The Xcelolab powder dispenser is a significant addition to Capsugel’s Xcelodose® precision powder dosing system range. It is specifically designed to enable laboratories to do accurate, closed loop, weight dispensing – difficult, and potentially inaccurate, manually or other laboratory methods.

Hi, I’m Lori Clapper with Pharmaceutical Online here at Interphex 2012. I’m at the Capsugel booth, talking with Missy Lowery. Missy, thanks so much for taking some time.

Thank you so much, too, for coming by.

One thing I’d like to start with is the problems the end users are facing out in the industry, for their everyday jobs. What are those problems that led to the development of the XceloLab?

Everything that we know about the pharmaceutical industry today is they want to speed up the process of drug discovery and delivery development, so all that we’ve worked on with our Xcelodose precision microdosing technology has been to create ways to make the decision of go or no go with a particular drug compound faster and more reliable.

Scientists today are using that API into a capsule as a part of their proof of concept for a drug and delaying moving into formulation until they know whether or not the concept has a potential.

Xcelodose itself is a fantastic technology for it, but many of our Xcelodose users wanted another smaller unit that they could use for powder characterization and also for microdosing into other dosage forms, such as a vial, syringe, or a test tube.

We put together the same technology with just the Xcelodose precision microdosing technology with an atomic metric on it that allows each and every capsule to be weighed in a range from less than 100 micrograms, but in this case with the Xcelolab, we’ve expanded up to several grams.

They’re able to use this smaller unit in their laboratory, and then the information they discover from the activities that they’re engaged in there, they can take into their manufacturing facility where the larger Xcelodose sits.

What are some of the applications for the Xcelolab?

In this case, scientists usually want to determine if they’ve got the right particular dosing head for their Xcelodose, and so they’ll use the Xcelolab to characterize powder. They may also need to build some vials, so it would be a powder into a vial application for a syringe later on, or into the syringe itself.

Again, it allows you to go as low as a 100 microgram weight and have accuracy within 2% range, but on an individual item, one at a time. Let’s put it this way. It’s taking a very big piece of forward-thinking technology and putting it into a small, lab-scale tool.

What emerging markets are out there for this technology?

In this case, most of the companies that we’ve been working with have been pharmaceutical companies who are engaged in trying to determine a broad base of different compounds which will offer them the best opportunity for success, prior to the time they do their formulation work.

Large and small have been engaged in it as well as contract research organizations and contract manufacturing organizations.