Particle Engineering Takes Center Stage in Push to Turn Lab Formulations into Real Medicines

A major pharmaceutical science journal has opened the door to one of the most consequential conversations in modern drug development. The Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, published by Springer, has announced a special issue devoted to translational advances in pharmaceutical dosage form development based on particle engineering and formulation science, scheduled for publication in January 2027. The issue will be guest edited by Sung-Joo Hwang of Yonsei University, Min-Soo Kim of Pusan National University, and Heejun Park of Duksung Women’s University, three Korean researchers whose institutions sit at the heart of an increasingly sophisticated Asian pharmaceutical formulation ecosystem. With a submission deadline of June 30, 2026, the call is already drawing attention from formulation scientists, process engineers, and drug delivery specialists who see the gap between a molecule that works in a beaker and a medicine that works in a patient as the defining challenge of their field.

The premise underlying the special issue is deceptively simple: most new drug molecules do not fail because they lack pharmacological activity, but because they cannot be delivered. An estimated large fraction of compounds emerging from discovery pipelines fall into the biopharmaceutics classification system’s low-solubility categories, meaning that the drug dissolves so poorly in gastrointestinal fluid that it never reaches the bloodstream at therapeutic concentrations. Particle engineering attacks this problem at its physical root. By reducing particle size to the micrometer or nanometer scale, scientists dramatically increase the surface-area-to-volume ratio available for dissolution, and by manipulating crystal form, amorphous content, or surface morphology they can shift thermodynamic and kinetic barriers that would otherwise keep the drug locked out of the body. The special issue explicitly invites work on particle engineering approaches for solubility, stability, and bioavailability enhancement, signaling that these foundational techniques remain the engine of dosage form innovation.

What distinguishes the current moment from earlier waves of formulation research is the demand for translation. A nanosuspension that performs beautifully on a laboratory bench is worthless if it cannot be milled reproducibly at industrial scale, stabilized against Ostwald ripening during months of storage, and manufactured under regulatory scrutiny at a cost patients and health systems can bear. The guest editors have placed translational formulation science and scale-up of drug products at the center of the call, alongside emerging manufacturing technologies in dosage form design and commercial production. This framing reflects a hard-won lesson of the past two decades: the physics of particles does not change when a process moves from a one-kilogram batch to a one-tonne campaign, but the way heat, moisture, shear, and residence time distribute through the equipment does, and those changes can silently alter the product.

Solid-state science occupies a particularly delicate position in this landscape. Many active pharmaceutical ingredients crystallize in multiple polymorphic forms, each with a distinct lattice energy and therefore a distinct solubility, melting point, and physical stability profile. A metastable form may dissolve faster and deliver better bioavailability, yet quietly convert to the stable form during storage, dragging performance down with it. Amorphous solid dispersions, in which a drug is molecularly dispersed in a glassy polymer carrier, buy solubility gains at the price of inherent thermodynamic instability and the constant risk of recrystallization. The special issue’s emphasis on solid-state characterization and control acknowledges that modern analytical tools, including powder X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, and vibrational spectroscopy, are no longer optional confirmatory tests but the load-bearing structure of product development.

The scope of the call extends well beyond oral tablets. The editors explicitly welcome advanced formulation strategies for oral, injectable, inhalable, and transdermal dosage forms, as well as advanced drug delivery systems more broadly. Each route imposes its own particle-level demands. Inhaled medicines must generate droplets or particles in a narrow aerodynamic diameter range, typically around one to five micrometers, so that they deposit in the deep lung rather than in the throat, and every unit operation from micronization to propellant blending must preserve that distribution. Injectable formulations must balance particle size against sterility, syringeability, and the risk of aggregation that could trigger immune responses. Transdermal systems depend on drug properties, adhesive chemistry, and membrane design working in concert to push molecules across the stratum corneum at controlled rates. A single special issue spanning these routes underscores how particle engineering has become a shared language across delivery technologies.

Two acronyms recur throughout the call and throughout the industry: QbD and PAT. Quality by Design is a regulatory philosophy, formalized in guidance from agencies including the United States Food and Drug Administration, that asks manufacturers to understand and control the variables that determine product quality rather than merely testing the finished product. In formulation terms, this means systematically mapping how excipient grade, processing temperature, mixing time, and dozens of other factors interact to affect critical quality attributes such as dissolution rate or content uniformity. Process Analytical Technology supplies the sensory apparatus for that philosophy: near-infrared probes, Raman spectroscopy, focused beam reflectance measurement, and similar inline tools that let engineers watch granulation, drying, blending, and crystallization as they happen, rather than discovering problems days later in the quality control laboratory. The special issue’s invitation for QbD and PAT applications in pharmaceutical formulation and manufacturing signals that the editors want papers demonstrating these frameworks in real production contexts, not just in theory.

The timing of the issue is not accidental. The pharmaceutical industry is simultaneously absorbing the demands of increasingly difficult molecules, including poorly soluble small molecules, high-molecular-weight biologics, and emerging modalities such as mRNA lipid nanoparticles and antibody-drug conjugates, while facing pressure to shorten development timelines and modernize manufacturing. Continuous manufacturing, hot-melt extrusion, supercritical fluid processing, and additive manufacturing of dosage forms have all matured from academic curiosities into technologies with approved products or late-stage pipelines behind them. At the same time, artificial intelligence and machine learning are being applied to formulation screening, predicting which excipient combinations and process conditions are most likely to succeed before a single experiment is run. A translational special issue arriving in January 2027 will capture the field at a moment when these computational and manufacturing revolutions are converging with classical particle science.

The Korean guest editorship carries its own significance. Sung-Joo Hwang of Yonsei University has long been associated with pharmaceutical formulation and drug delivery research, and Min-Soo Kim of Pusan National University and Heejun Park of Duksung Women’s University bring complementary expertise in physical pharmacy and formulation technology. Their leadership situates the Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation, an international journal rooted in the Korean pharmaceutical research community, as a venue where Asian formulation science and global industry practice meet. Korea’s pharmaceutical sector has invested heavily in advanced generics, biosimilars, and contract development and manufacturing, making it an apt host for a conversation about how laboratory innovations become commercial medicines. The editorial team’s composition also reflects the increasingly international character of dosage form research, in which formulation platforms developed in one country are routinely licensed, manufactured, and regulated across many others.

For researchers considering submissions, the June 30, 2026 deadline sets a demanding but realistic horizon. Work suitable for the issue will likely span fundamental studies of nucleation and crystal growth, applied investigations of novel excipients and delivery platforms, and engineering analyses of how processes behave at scale, all unified by the question of whether the science survives contact with manufacturing reality and patient physiology. The breadth of the topic list, from solubility enhancement to commercial production technologies, suggests that the editors envision the issue as a snapshot of the entire translational pipeline rather than a narrow technical symposium. In a field where the distance between a promising particle and an approved product is measured in years of characterization, stability testing, and regulatory negotiation, a dedicated venue for that full journey is a rare and valuable thing.

The deeper story the special issue tells is about the maturation of pharmaceutical technology as a discipline in its own right. For much of the modern era, formulation was treated as an afterthought to discovery, a matter of finding a way to swallow an active ingredient. That era is over. Today the dosage form is where molecular promise meets biological and industrial reality, and the scientists who engineer particles, control solid states, and design quality into processes are not supporting players but central actors in whether a drug ever helps a patient. By gathering translational advances in particle engineering and formulation science under one cover, the Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation is betting that the next generation of medicines will be won or lost not in the discovery laboratory, but in the powder, the process, and the product that carry molecules from bench to bedside.

Subject of Research: Translational pharmaceutical formulation science and particle engineering for dosage form development

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

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