Why Can't I Use Bacon Fat In My Drug Product Formulation?

By Bruce Rehlaender, Ph.D., Principal, Formulation Development, PharmaDirections, Inc.

If there were a bar where all of the hip drug product formulators hung out at the end of a hard day of formulating, two things would be certain, the beers on tap would be from breweries like Avery, Greenflash, and Dogfish Head rather than Coors, Miller, and Anheuser Busch, and all of the jokes would be about discovery guys. We formulators would pick on the discovery guys in part because deep down inside we realize they are smarter than us and get more dates than we do and in part because they make our lives miserable, and they think that DMSO is a formulation. Just as likely in this bar is that no one would dare challenge out loud the sanctity of our bible, the FDA Inactive Ingredients Guide, for fear of being beaten up out back by a bunch of hooligan formulation zealots.