LUBRITAB® - A versatile excipient from natural origin

Being a solid lipid, LUBRITAB® has various applications pertaining to pharmaceuticals

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To design a pharma or nutra formulation, excipients are selected according to their properties, advantages, risks, regulatory status and many more attributes. Due to the benefits of low safety concerns, lipids have become an interesting and promising category of excipients for multiple purposes.[1]

The term “lipid” describes a family of products with diverse physicochemical properties. Their composition includes oils, fats, waxes, fatty acids and their derivatives, and biosynthetically or functionally-related substances to these compounds.[1] Naturally occurring lipids are typically triglycerides (triacylglycerols or triglycerides, TAGs), esters of glycerol and three fatty acids.

The nature and compositions of three fatty acid chains of a TAG molecule, defined as R1, R2 and R3, determine its chemical property. An important characteristic of TAGs is their crystallisation behaviour. The crystallisation behaviour (crystallisation rate, crystal sizes and their network, crystal morphology and crystallinity) of the TAG is directly influenced by polymorphism, and by several external factors such as temperature, pressure, solvent, rate of crystallisation, impurities, etc. Due to the conformation differences, they present different melting points.[1] This difference helps in identifying particular TAG grade (eg Glyceryl monostearate and distearate, Hydrogenated vegetable oil Type I and Type II, various grades of Polyoxylglycerides). This phenomenon is also important to define applications and process of specific TAG moiety.