What is the difference between the three terms of pharmaceutical raw materials, pharmaceutical intermediates, and pharmaceutical excipients?-Anhui Union Pharmaceuticals Technology Co., Ltd., Intermediates

What is the difference between the three terms of pharmaceutical raw materials, pharmaceutical intermediates, and pharmaceutical excipients?

Release time：

Aug 30,2022

Pharmaceutical excipients: Pharmaceutical excipients refer to the general term for all medicinal materials except the main drug added to the prescription in order to solve the formability, effectiveness, stability and safety of the preparation when the preparation is designed. The essence of the prescription design process of pharmaceutical preparations is the process of selecting and applying pharmaceutical excipients according to the characteristics of the drug and the requirements of the dosage form.

Pharmaceutical raw materials: refers to various raw materials including APIs and excipients used for preparations to become medicines.

APIs: refers to the raw material medicine used for the production of various preparations, and is the active ingredient in the preparation

Various substances prepared by chemical synthesis, plant extraction or biotechnology for medicinal purposes such as powders, crystals, extracts, etc., but which cannot be directly taken by patients.

And the drug in powder, crystal, and extract state is processed into administration forms (such as tablets, capsules, injections, pills, ointments, etc.) that are convenient for patients to take, and these administration forms are called drug dosage forms.

After the specific APIs are processed, it becomes pharmaceutical preparations.

The name of the API is mainly relative to the preparation.

APIs are mainly produced by chemical processing to supply as raw materials for the production of dosage forms.

For example, cefpirome sulfate for injection is a medicine, then cefpirome sulfate is an API.

Pharmaceutical intermediates: Intermediates are the precursors of APIs and are the products of various stages before being made into APIs.

Pharmaceutical excipients: Pharmaceutical excipients refer to the general term for all medicinal materials other than the main drug added to the prescription in order to solve the formability, effectiveness, stability and safety of the preparation when the preparation is designed. The essence of the prescription design process of pharmaceutical preparations is the process of selecting and applying pharmaceutical excipients according to the characteristics of the drug and the requirements of the dosage form.

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