Optimization of coating time and weight gain in cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride tablet coating process

The treatment of diseases through drugs predates written history, starting with drugs of natural origin, extracted mainly from plants and some minerals, up to the current highly technological drugs. Historically, the drug cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride has been used to treat several diseases, however, with the advancement of studies, it is currently recognized as a muscle relaxant. Drugs can be administered into the human body through numerous routes of admission, the most common being the oral route, commonly ingested in the form of tablets. In order for the drug to become a tablet, transformation processes are necessary, namely: granulation, compression and coating. In this work, the best parameters to obtain a more robust and optimized coating were evaluated through a 2³ factorial design, evaluating how the input variables: airflow rate, pump speed and pan speed influence the response variables weight gain and process time. Based on the experiments, it was possible to obtain a multiple linear regression model with R² of 0.984 and 0.985 respectively, that is, the adjusted model efficiently describes the process behavior. Furthermore, based on the data analysis, it was verified that the three evaluated parameters have an influence on the weight gain, mainly the pan speed and pump speed, whereas for the process time response variable, the only significant parameter was the pump speed.