Areas covered: The review firstly presents a systematic analysis of the trends in development of particle delivery systems using spray drying. This is followed by exploring the mechanisms governing particle formation and the transformations undergone in the various process stages. The next section highlights the particle design factors including those of different equipment configurations and feed/process attributes. Finally, the review summarises the current industrial approaches for scale-up of pharmaceutical spray drying.

Expert opinion: The spray drying process provides the ability to directly design particles of the desired functionality. This is of great benefit for the pharmaceutical sector especially as product specifications are becoming more encompassing and exacting. One of the biggest barriers to the spray dried product translation remains one of scale-up/scale-down. A shift from the trial and error approaches of the past to fundamental model-based particle design approaches helps to enhance control over product properties. To this end, process innovations and advanced manufacturing technologies are also particularly welcomed.

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