Pharmaceutical Scientists Unite to Translate Particle Engineering into Next-Generation Drug Dosage Forms

A major editorial effort is underway to accelerate the journey of experimental formulation science from the laboratory bench to the pharmacy shelf. The Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, a peer-reviewed journal published by Springer, has announced a special issue devoted to translational advances in pharmaceutical dosage form development based on particle engineering and formulation science. The issue, scheduled for publication in January 2027, is being assembled by three guest editors based in South Korea: Sung-Joo Hwang of Yonsei University, Min-Soo Kim of Pusan National University, and Heejun Park of Duksung Women’s University. Researchers wishing to contribute have been given a submission deadline of June 30, 2026, giving laboratories worldwide roughly a year and a half to prepare original work for consideration.

The announcement arrives at a moment when the pharmaceutical industry is confronting a persistent and expensive problem: a large proportion of drug candidates emerging from discovery pipelines are poorly soluble in water, which severely limits how much of an administered dose actually reaches the bloodstream. Particle engineering offers a family of physical and chemical strategies for overcoming this barrier. By controlling the size, shape, crystal form, and surface properties of drug particles, formulators can dramatically alter dissolution rate, solubility, and ultimately bioavailability. Reducing particle size into the micrometer or nanometer range increases the surface area available for dissolution, while converting a crystalline drug into an amorphous solid dispersion can produce an apparent solubility advantage that enables oral absorption of otherwise unusable molecules. These are precisely the kinds of approaches the special issue seeks to showcase.

The scope of the call for papers is deliberately broad, spanning six thematic areas that together map the modern landscape of dosage form development. The first covers particle engineering approaches for solubility, stability, and bioavailability enhancement, the core discipline that underpins much of contemporary formulation work. The second addresses advanced formulation strategies for pharmaceutical dosage forms, explicitly including oral, injectable, inhalable, and transdermal routes as well as advanced drug delivery systems. The third focuses on solid-state characterization and control, the analytical backbone that determines whether a carefully engineered drug form survives manufacturing, storage, and the acidic environment of the stomach. The remaining themes address translational formulation science and scale-up, emerging manufacturing technologies, and the application of Quality by Design and Process Analytical Technology frameworks to formulation and production.

Solid-state science deserves particular attention because it sits at the intersection of chemistry, engineering, and regulatory science. A single active pharmaceutical ingredient can exist in multiple crystalline polymorphs, each with a different arrangement of molecules in the solid lattice and therefore different physical properties such as melting point, dissolution behavior, and mechanical stability. The most stable polymorph at a given temperature and pressure dissolves most slowly, while metastable forms that dissolve faster may spontaneously convert to the stable form during processing or storage, erasing the intended performance benefit overnight. Amorphous materials sidestep the lattice entirely but carry their own risk of recrystallization, often requiring polymeric stabilizers and careful control of moisture and temperature. Characterization techniques such as powder X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic vapor sorption, and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance allow scientists to fingerprint these forms and monitor them throughout a product’s life cycle, which is why the special issue lists solid-state control as a standalone topic.

The emphasis on translation and scale-up reflects a hard truth in pharmaceutical development: a formulation that performs beautifully on a laboratory bench may fail when produced at commercial scale. Processes such as hot-melt extrusion, spray drying, and high-shear wet granulation behave differently when the batch size grows by orders of magnitude, because heat transfer, drying kinetics, and mixing efficiency do not scale linearly. A nanosuspension prepared by wet milling in a small vessel may show a different particle size distribution when the same milling media and residence times are applied in industrial equipment. Translational formulation science seeks to anticipate these changes, designing processes and formulations that remain robust from the first gram to the final tonne. Contributions that document this journey, including the failures and fixes along the way, are exactly the kind of practical knowledge that the guest editors appear to want gathered in one place.

Emerging manufacturing technologies form another pillar of the issue. Continuous manufacturing has been gaining ground in the pharmaceutical industry as an alternative to traditional batch processing, offering tighter control, smaller footprints, and the ability to move material directly from powder feed to finished tablet without intermediate storage. Additive manufacturing, most visibly three-dimensional printing, has demonstrated the ability to produce dosage forms with complex internal geometries and personalized doses that conventional tableting cannot achieve. Other technologies, including electrospinning for nanofibrous drug carriers, supercritical fluid processing for solvent-free particle formation, and microfluidic platforms for the reproducible production of lipid nanoparticles, are expanding the toolbox available to formulators. The special issue’s inclusion of commercial production among its emerging technologies signals an interest not only in laboratory novelties but in processes that can realistically be validated, licensed, and run at industrial scale.

The sixth thematic area, Quality by Design and Process Analytical Technology, represents a regulatory philosophy that has reshaped how drug products are developed and approved. Quality by Design asks developers to begin with predefined objectives, identify the critical material attributes of both drug substance and excipients, and understand how process parameters affect the quality attributes of the final product. Rather than testing quality into a finished batch, the goal is to build it in through design space definition and risk management. Process Analytical Technology supplies the real-time measurement tools that make this possible: near-infrared spectroscopy can monitor blend uniformity inside a granulator, Raman spectroscopy can track polymorphic conversion during crystallization, and laser diffraction can verify particle size in a spray-drying stream without stopping the process. Together these frameworks allow continuous verification of product quality and support the regulatory flexibility that modern agencies increasingly expect.

The breadth of dosage routes named in the call, from oral tablets to injectables, inhalables, and transdermal systems, underscores how particle engineering principles cut across delivery technologies. Inhaled medicines depend on aerodynamic particle size in a narrow range, typically a few micrometers, to deposit in the deep lung rather than the throat, making particle size control a direct determinant of therapeutic performance. Transdermal patches rely on drug properties and formulation design to drive molecules through the skin barrier at controlled rates. Injectable formulations, including long-acting suspensions and emerging nanocarriers, depend on particle characteristics for both syringeability and the duration of drug release after administration. By inviting contributions across all of these routes, the editors are framing particle engineering not as a niche specialty but as a unifying discipline of pharmaceutics.

The guest editorial team brings a combination of academic and translational experience to the project. Sung-Joo Hwang of Yonsei University has a long record in pharmaceutical formulation and drug delivery research, Min-Soo Kim of Pusan National University works extensively on particle engineering and solubility enhancement technologies, and Heejun Park of Duksung Women’s University contributes expertise in pharmaceutics and formulation development. Their decision to devote a full special issue to translational aspects, rather than to a single technology, suggests an intent to capture a snapshot of the field as it stands in the middle of the decade, with an eye toward what actually reaches patients. For the Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, which serves an international readership of pharmaceutical scientists, the January 2027 issue could function as a reference collection for both academic researchers and industry formulators.

For researchers in pharmaceutics, the announcement is effectively an open invitation to publish work where it will be read by the community that matters most to this discipline. The June 30, 2026 deadline provides a concrete target for groups with mature datasets on nanocrystal stabilization, amorphous solid dispersion manufacturability, continuous processing case studies, or analytical method development for solid-state control. As drug molecules continue to grow larger, less soluble, and more demanding in their delivery requirements, the value of disciplined particle engineering and formulation science only increases. Whether the next generation of medicines arrives as printed personalized tablets, continuously manufactured amorphous dispersions, or inhalable nanocarriers, the path from molecule to medicine will run through the same territory this special issue is designed to map: the controlled manipulation of particles and formulations, translated reliably from laboratory insight to industrial product.

Subject of Research: A special issue of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation on translational pharmaceutical dosage form development through particle engineering and formulation science

Article Title: Special Issue: Translational Advances in Pharmaceutical Dosage Form Development Based on Particle Engineering and Formulation Science

Article References: Special Issue: Translational Advances in Pharmaceutical Dosage Form Development Based on Particle Engineering and Formulation Science. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: particle engineering, formulation science, drug delivery, bioavailability, solid-state characterization, Quality by Design, Process Analytical Technology, continuous manufacturing, amorphous solid dispersions, pharmaceutical scale-up, dosage forms, Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation