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Electrospinning is a promising drying technology providing a rapid and gentle drying at ambient temperature, thus electrospinning of polyvinyl alcohol aqueous solutions was investigated for the solid formulation of biopharmaceuticals. The commonly used single-needle electrospinning does not have adequate productivity to satisfy the industrial requirements, therefore our aim was to study the scale-up of the technology by using high-speed electrospinning. High molecular weight polyethylene oxide as a secondary polymer was applied to enhance the fiber formation of polyvinyl alcohol. While polyvinyl alcohol-polyethylene oxide formulations resulted in adequate fiber formation it was not possible to process them further as the friability of the fibers was too low. In order to increase the friability, the effect of adding various sugars (mannitol, glucose, lactose, saccharose, and trehalose) was investigated. The results showed that mannitol was the best friability enhancing excipient because of its crystallinity and low moisture content in the fibrous sample. In contrast, glucose, lactose, saccharose, and trehalose were amorphous with higher moisture content and fibers containing these were grindable only after post-drying.

Polymer-based electrospun amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs) were prepared and investigated from pharmaceutical application point of view. Spironolactone (SPIR) was used as model drug mixed in various concentrations with polymers suitable for fibre formation, such as vinylpyrrolidone-vinyl acetate copolymer, polyvinylpyrrolidone K30 and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose. Single needle electrospinning was applied at first for screening the composition of the prepared ASDs. Scaling-up the selected polymer-drug combination was accomplished by high speed electrospinning, the productivity of which enabled investigation of downstream processing to generate tablet formulation. The steps of a potential continuous production line (fibre collection, grinding, feeding and tableting) proved to be feasible with the electrospun ASD without any sign of crystallization. If crystalline drug was added into the ASD containing tablets as impurity strictly monotonous decrease of drug dissolution was observed in the function of the crystalline drug content. The capabilities of the non-destructive Raman and near-infrared spectroscopies, as fast quality assurance tools, were compared to each other in quantifying of crystalline SPIR content in the prepared tablets.