Spirig Pharma AG

A polemic in response to Sharma et al. (ibid., 593-594, 18-26, 2017.).The authors state that the genotoxicity reported for the trans 2-ethylhexyl-4-methoxycinnamate (EHMC) as DNA breaks in the comet assay by Sharma et al.(2017) is not in agreement with the absence of genotoxicity and photo-genotoxicity of this compound as a cosmetic ingredient,reported previously by European regulatory agencies.The authors also state that the article under discussion has not provided a fair evaluation of literature data on EHMC genotoxic potential,but a one-sided data review.In conclusion,the authors found that EHMC has no genotoxic potential in the GreenScreen HC assay confirming previous results (Struweetal.,2007; SCC,2000) and they suggest that Sharma et al.(2017) re-evaluate their results and comet assay parameters to explain such discrepancy both in terms of genotoxicity and cytotoxicity results.The authors are employees of Nestle Skin Health, and financial support for this work was provided by Nestle Skin Health.

Emulsions are widely used for pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic applications. To guarantee that their critical quality attributes meet specifications, it is desirable to monitor the emulsion manufacturing process. However, finding of a suitable process analyzer has so far remained challenging. This article introduces diffusing wave spectroscopy (DWS) as an at-line technique to follow the manufacturing process of a model oil-in-water pharmaceutical emulsion containing xanthan gum. The DWS results were complemented with mechanical rheology, microscopy analysis, and stability tests. DWS is an advanced light scattering technique that assesses the microrheology and in general provides information on the dynamics and statics of dispersions. The obtained microrheology results showed good agreement with those obtained with bulk rheology. Although no notable changes in the rheological behavior of the model emulsions were observed during homogenization, the intensity correlation function provided qualitative information on the evolution of the emulsion dynamics. These data together with static measurements of the transport mean free path (l*) correlated very well with the changes in droplet size distribution occurring during the emulsion homogenization. This study shows that DWS is a promising process analytical technology tool for development and manufacturing of pharmaceutical emulsions.