Granulation process analysis technologies and potential applications in traditional Chinese medicine

Pharmaceutical production is changing from batch production to continuous production, during which granulation is one of the most important unit operations. The quality of mass-produced products is traditionally guaranteed by conducting off-line testing, which cannot meet the demand of continuous production for real-time monitoring of critical process parameters and critical quality attributes (CQAs) of the pharmaceutical granulation technology. Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed process analytical technology (PAT) in 2004, many PAT tools have been developed to monitor the granulation process and provide information regarding the granulation operation conditions and endpoint determination. In this article, we review the recent research and application of two PAT modes in the granulation process, namely, single CQA and multi-CQA PAT, with the aim to provide references for comprehensively improving the technological level of the pharmaceutical granulation process. Furthermore, the potential applications in traditional Chinese Medicine are discussed.