Course Objectives and Requirements:

Pharmaceutics represents one of the most important specialty compulsory courses for students who major in Pharmacy, which is a comprehensive practical technique discipline that relates to studies on basic theory, formulation design, preparatory process, quality control and reasonable application of pharmaceutical preparations. The objective of Pharmaceutics is to produce safe, effective and stable pharmaceutical preparations in order to convenient use. Before approaching to clinical application, any kind of medicament should be prepared as a safe, effective and stable administration form suitable for patients’ use, namely dosage form. Pharmaceutics is the final route for the research fruits in pharmacy to achieve the production transformation and thus to benefit for human health. Study of Pharmaceutics may provide the students with indispensable basic specialty knowledge, which lets them to develop smoothly and progress continuously in their future careers on pharmaceutical research, manufacture and supplying.  Therefore, the teaching objectives and requirements on Pharmaceutics are highlighted as follows:

(1) To enable the students to master the basic knowledge on various pharmaceutical dosage forms, such as the definition, characteristics and properties, quality requirements, reasonable application and so on;

(2) To master the formulation design, preparatory process, quality control of pharmaceutical preparations as well as being able to make pertinent evaluation on their quality;

(3) To understand well dosage form design principle, and the theoretical knowledge and operation skills for preparation and manufacturing of various dosage forms;

(4) To understand well the latest techniques and novel dosage forms involved in Pharmaceutics and to know the state-of-the-art of this discipline.

Course Contents:

The main teaching contents include three parts: general introduction to pharmaceutical dosage forms (Basic Pharmaceutics), physio-chemical principles on pharmaceutics (Physical Pharmaceutics), New Techniques and Novel Dosage Forms of Pharmaceutics (Drug Delivery Systems). The key points and main areas of difficulty for teaching are as follows:

(1) Key Points:

a. To master the basic knowledge and theory on various ordinary dosage forms, such as definition, characteristics, classification, preparatory processes, quality evaluation and so on;

b. To understand well the manufacturing equipment and machines for the ordinary dosage forms, primary theories on Physical Pharmaceutics, and the advanced accomplishments of scientific research in Pharmaceutics;

c. To know the developing direction and promising future of scientific research in Pharmaceutics.   

(2) Main Areas of Difficulty:

a. Understanding of theories on Physical Pharmaceutics and their application in different kinds of dosage forms;

b. Understanding of the basic theories pertaining the design, preparation, formation, drug release and application of new techniques and novel dosage forms of Pharmaceutics, for example, sustained release, controlled release, targeting drug delivery systems, etc.

c. Making practice what students learn from Pharmaceutics to engage in pharmaceutical research and drug products R&D.

Credits: 3.5