The Importance of Freezing on Lyophilization Cycle Development
Transcription
The Importance of Freezing on Lyophilization Cycle Development
The Importance of Freezing on Lyophilization Cycle Development Thomas W. Patapoff and David E. Overcashier The freezing method used during lyophilization can substantially affect the structure of the ice formed, the watervapor flow during primary drying, and the quality of the final dried product. Controlling how a solution freezes can shorten lyophilization cycles and produce more stable formulations. 16 BioPharm MARCH 2002 L yophilization (freeze-drying) is often used to prepare dry pharmaceutical formulations to achieve commercially viable shelf lives. The process comprises three steps: freezing, primary drying, and secondary drying. As water freezes in the first step, the dissolved components in the formulation remain in the residual liquid, a phase termed the freeze-concentrate. At the point of maximal ice formation, the freezeconcentrate solidifies between the ice crystals that make up the lattice. Under appropriate lyophilization conditions, the ice is removed by sublimation during primary drying, leaving the remaining freeze-concentrate in the same physical and chemical structure as when the ice was present. Residual water in the freeze-concentrate is removed in the secondary drying step. Lyophilization cycle development typically focuses on optimizing the primary drying step. That is the most time consuming of the three steps, and the primary drying parameters are easily adjustable. They can affect both the time involved and the quality of the resulting cake. Extensive investigation of primary drying has demonstrated that two important parameters are chamber pressure and shelf temperature (1–9). They are usually adjusted to maximize the rate of heat transfer to each vial (speeding ice sublimation) without causing cake collapse. Less attention has been paid to the freezing conditions and their potential effect on the primary and secondary drying processes and on the characteristics of the final product. Kochs et al. reported the effects of freezing conditions on primary drying in a specially designed aluminum and plastic sample cell (10). They observed variations in vapor diffusion coefficients (a measure of the ease of water-vapor flow) as a function of position and cooling rate. The variations appeared to be largely due to variations in sample morphology. Searles et al. reported some effects of freezing on the rate of primary drying in vials (11). They found that the primary drying rate was dependent on the ice nucleation temperature. Faster drying was also attributed to an increase in lamellar ice crystal content, formed when ice nucleants from Pseudomonas syringae were added in the vial contents. Searles and colleagues also showed that adding a properly specified annealing step in the freezing procedure increased the drying rate (12). Our article describes the effects of several freezing methods on water-vapor flow during primary drying and on the final dried cake structure. NORMAL FREEZING AND SUBLIMATION When freeze-drying pharmaceutical products, manufacturers place vials containing aqueous formulations on shelves within a lyophilizer. Typically, the shelf temperature is then decreased (from 5 °C) over three hours and held at a low temperature (typically 40 °C to 50 °C) to ensure that all the vials freeze completely. As the temperature decreases, the liquid cools below the freezing point of the solution: Supercooled temperatures range from 10 °C to 20 °C with ice nucleation typically occurring at 15 °C. Freezing point depression accounts for a lowering of the freezing temperature by only 1.8 kelvin per molal. Most pharmaceutical manufacturing relies on supercooling because of the lack of nucleation centers in the formulations (such as particulates in solution or imperfections on the inside surface of the vials). In a supercooled solution at 15 °C, ice can nucleate and propagate through the solution. MASS TRANSFER RESISTANCE An important parameter governing the relationship between independent variables (the shelf temperature and chamber pressure) and dependent variables (the ice sublimation rate and the product temperature) has been defined by Pikal as the resistance to water-vapor flow or the mass transfer resistance (MTR) (2). Determining MTR. MTR describes the proportionality between the specific sublimation rate m and the pressure driving force PoPv: Ap Po –Pv MTR = m /A p where m is the sublimation rate, Ap is the crosssectional area of the product in the vial, MTR is the normalized dried product resistance, Po is the equilibrium vapor pressure of ice at the temperature of the subliming ice, and Pv is the pressure in the chamber. The relationship is analogous to that of electrical resistance: For a given pressure driving force (voltage), a decrease in MTR (electrical resistance) increases the rate of sublimation (electrical current). To determine MTR, measure the product temperature (from which we obtain Po using the equation published by Jancso et al., 13) and the sublimation rate m . These measurements can be obtained using a thermocouple and sequentially stoppering the vials during primary drying, Freezing Method Shelf Temp (°C) Sublimation Rate (g/hr) Product Temp (°C) Standard Vertical Vertical Vertical 10 10 20 30 0.36 0.46 0.48 0.55 24.5 27.0 26.0 23.5 Dried Layer [Resistance (cm2 mTorr hr g1)] (a) 10,000 Table 1. Effect of freezing method and primary drying shelf temperature on sublimation rate and primary drying product temperature Fast freezing Standard freezing Vertical freezing Annealed 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 (b) Derivative [Resistance (cm2 mTorr hr g1)] However, the entire solution cannot freeze immediately because the supercooled water can absorb only 15 cal/g of the 79 cal/g of heat given off by the ice formation. Therefore, the ice propagates from the nucleation site, and about 19% crystallizes in multibranching, tortuous paths while the vial contents warm to approximately 1 °C. After the initial ice network has formed, additional heat is removed from the solution by the shelf, and the remaining water freezes when the previously formed ice crystals grow. Primary drying. At the completion of freezing, primary drying is initiated with the lowering of the chamber pressure and an increase in the shelf temperature. The ice sublimation front moves downward through the frozen plug, a process that makes the water vapor transit through the channels left by the sublimed ice above. Those narrow, often tortuous channels resist vapor flow, so sublimation is slowed. Consideration of the vapor channels illustrates how the method of freezing, by affecting ice crystal structure, can affect primary drying. Decreasing the resistance to mass transfer of water vapor increases the sublimation rate, which leads to shorter primary drying times while lowering the product temperature. 50,000 Fast freezing Standard freezing Vertical freezing Annealed 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Dried Layer Thickness (cm) Figure 1. Mass transfer resistance as a function of dried layer thickness for material frozen by various methods: (a) cumulative MTR, (b) derivative of MTR then weighing the amount of the remaining solution. We previously published a complete description of this method for determining MTR (9). Effect of the freezing method on MTR. Figure 1 shows MTRs during primary drying (10 °C shelf temperature, 100 mTorr chamber pressure) for vials frozen using the standard freezing process that we described earlier and for those frozen by alternative methods described below (plots used 25 mg/mL rhuMAb HER2, 20 mg/mL trehalose, 0.1 mg/mL polysorbate 20, and 5 mM histidine, with a 6.0 pH, filled at 5.0 mL in 10cc tubing vials). Following standard freezing, the resistance initially rose quickly, then more slowly as the sublimation front moved down the vial (increasing the thickness of the dried layer). That indicates that the upper layer of the dried cake contributed more to the resistance than did the lower portion, suggesting that the structure of the dried layer varied in the vertical direction. Curves in Figure 1a represent the effect of the dried layer thickness on the cumulative MTR. The BioPharm MARCH 2002 17 filled vial add fluorescent dye image under a fluorescence microscope lyophilize warm, add black paraffin under vacuum cut plug cool, release plug Figure 2. Paraffin dye method local MTR for various cake depths can be determined from the derivative of those curves (Figure 1b). The derivative curve (for standard freezing) also shows that the upper layer of the dried cake contributes more to the resistance than does the lower portion. That result is consistent with the results published by Kochs et al. (10). The relationship between resistance and dried cake structure can be investigated by studying cake structure after lyophilization. CAKE STRUCTURE The structure of a lyophilized cake has been reported several times (14–20). In most cases, cakes came from a supercooled solution with little or no attempt at controlling ice nucleation or propagation direction. Samples were generally cut or pulled apart and viewed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Because the potentially fragile cake structure was unsupported, the area exposed may have been altered by the cutting. If the cake is pulled apart, the tear will likely follow a structural weakness in the cake, so the exposed area may not be representative of the rest of the cake. In the paraffin investment technique we developed (Figure 2), paraffin acts as a support for the physical fine structure of the cake and also prevents water absorption during sectioning, observation, and storage (9). The method uses a fluorescent molecule (such as rhodamine B) that is added to the solution before lyophilization and distributes equally throughout the cake (with no visible phase separation or spatial partitioning). After lyophilization, the cake in the vial is placed under vacuum and warmed to 55 °C. Then paraffin is poured into the vial. While warm and under 18 BioPharm MARCH 2002 vacuum, the paraffin enters all the pores of the cake with no observable disturbance to the cake structure. The vial is then removed from the vacuum oven, cooled, and sectioned. The sectioned cakes are then observed under a fluorescence microscope. Interference from the fluorescence deeper in the cake is minimized by using a dark dye in the paraffin. Correlating MTR to cake structure. The tortuous path that supercooled ice takes when propagating (Figure 3a) shows little directionality to the channels after sublimation. Those channels, roughly 25–100 m in diameter, serve as conduits for water-vapor transport from the sublimation front to the vial headspace. Resistance to vapor flow out of the cake is a result of both the small, tortuous channels and thick skin-like material on the top of the cake (reaching a thickness greater than 1–2 mm). In the standard freezing scenario of Figures 1a and 1b, high MTR can be seen as the sublimation front moves down through the first 0.2 cm of the cake, corresponding to the thickness of the skin. Once the sublimation front passed the skin, the cumulative MTR increased more slowly (suggesting lower local MTR). CONTROLLING ICE NUCLEATION One way to produce directional freezing is to freeze the vial contents rapidly by immersing the vial into a dry-ice/ethanol bath until it is completely frozen. The resulting pores left from the rapid freezing and ice propagation are very small (Figure 3b). They start at the walls of the vial, move toward the middle, then move up. Although directional, the pores are small and nonvertical. The effect of such fast freezing can be seen in the MTR: The cumulative MTR increases rapidly and to a higher level (Figure 1a) and shows very high local MTR at small cake depths (Figure 1b). For fast freezing, that high MTR is attributable to the small size of the pores and to the horizontal direction of the channels near the surface of the cake. The restricted vapor flow results in slower ice sublimation. Vertical freezing. To obtain straight, vertical channels, solutions were cooled on wet ice, nucleated at the bottom with dry-ice, and placed on a 50 °C shelf. The ice crystals propagate vertically, and no thick skin forms on the cake surface (Figure 3c). As expected, a vertical channel orientation and the lack of thick skin on top lowers the MTR from that of samples from standard and fast-freezing protocols (Figure 1a). Figure 1b shows that the local MTR is also low and constant for all cake depths. Interestingly, Figure 1b also suggests that changing the freezing method did not alter the cake structure at the vial bottom, because the local MTR values are equivalent for dried layer thickness greater than 0.5 cm. Vertical freezing produces a higher sublimation rate and lower product temperature during primary drying (Table 1). The lower MTR allows faster sublimation, which results in lower product temperatures through increased heat removal from the latent heat of sublimation. The vertical freezing results are consistent with those found by Searles et al. that the presence of lamellar (instead of spheroidal) ice crystals increases drying rates (11). Figure 3. Freeze-dried cake appearance corresponding to standard and alternative freezing methods: (a) supercooling using standard freezing; (b) fast freezing; (c) vertical freezing; and (d) standard freezing followed by annealing (photo courtesy of Genentech, Inc.) SUPERCOOLING AND ANNEALING Ice structure and MTR during primary drying can be altered by freezing the vial contents using the standard method (supercooling followed by spontaneous nucleation), then warming the frozen solution in the vial to a temperature just below the melting point (for example 2 °C) for 10 hours. This allows the ice crystals to rearrange and grow to a more stable state. The vials are then cooled again to 50 °C. Figure 3d shows results from that annealing process. The cakes produced after annealing tend to have larger pores than those from the standard freezing method, which would be expected to facilitate water-vapor transmission and lower the MTR during primary drying. Figure 1a shows that the annealed material has a much lower MTR than solutions frozen by the standard or fast processes and is comparable to solutions that were nucleated on the bottom with vertical ice propagation. The lower resistance observed for annealed material is consistent with a faster sublimation reported by Searles et al. (12). Figure 1b also shows that the annealed material has a local MTR that is low and constant throughout the cake. The effects of any skin appear to be minimal. DECREASING MTR BY OTHER METHODS Depending on solution composition, it may be possible to adjust the temperature (or the formulation) such that primary drying takes place at product temperatures near the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the freeze-concentrate. That allows the freeze-concentrate to flow enough to create holes in the channel walls so water vapor can be transmitted in a less tortuous path, more directly up and out of the cake. Figure 4a shows an SEM result in which holes have formed in the walls of the pores. These porous walls were not evident in formulations containing protein (Figure 4b) but were observed only in formulations using a protein-free placebo, which has a lower Tg. The holes were less evident in the protein-free material when it was dried at lower temperatures. That implies that not all formulations are amenable to pore formation. Figure 5 shows that the MTR for the placebo was significantly lower than that of the solution that contains protein (9). Obviously, the selection of processing conditions needs to consider final product quality. The possibility that such a smallscale collapse might alter the molecular structure or stability of the product would need to be evaluated by an appropriate analytical program. Table 2. Effect of freezing method on the dried state stability of a therapeutic proteina Freezing Method Standard Annealed Aggregation Rateb 2.3c 1.6 a2.5 mg/mL protein, 123 mg/mL total excipient bat 50 °C cpercent per month OPTIMIZING THE CYCLE The manner of freezing can have a significant impact on primary drying characteristics of a formulation. For a given primary drying shelf temperature and chamber pressure, a decrease in MTR will increase the rate of sublimation. In addition, an increase in the rate of sublimation will lead to a lower product temperature because of the enthalpy of ice sublimation (Table 1). Increasing the primary drying shelf temperature of vertically frozen vials increases the product tem- BioPharm MARCH 2002 19 Dried Layer [Resistance (cm2 mTorr hr g1)] 6,000 Active Placebo 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 Dried layer thickness (cm) Figure 5. Cumulative mass transfer resistance as a function of dried layer thickness for active and placebo material Figure 4. SEM micrographs of freeze-dried material and the effect of formulation on microstructure: (a) placebo (45 mg/mL trehalose, 0.1 mg/mL polysorbate 20, and 5 mM histidine at 6.0 pH) and (b) active protein (25 mg/mL rhuMAb HER2, 20 mg/mL trehalose, 0.1 mg/mL polysorbate 20, and 5 mM histidine at 6.0 pH) (photo courtesy of Genentech, Inc.) Corresponding author Thomas W. Patapoff is a senior scientist and director, and David E. Overcashier is a senior process engineer in Pharmaceutical R&D at Genentech, Inc., One DNA Way, South San Francisco, CA 94080, 650.225.8006, fax 650.225.7234, [email protected], www.gene.com. 20 BioPharm MARCH 2002 perature for primary drying, which then matches that of a standard-frozen material dried at a colder shelf temperature. That higher shelf temperature adds driving force to the heat transfer, speeding primary drying. For equivalent product temperatures, the rate of sublimation was 40% faster for vertically oriented ice than for standard-frozen solutions (Table 1). That leads to a decrease in the time required for primary drying — which constitutes half of the time spent in the lyophilization process. Such a decrease should also be expected from annealed vials, so the duration of the lyophilization cycle should be reduced as well. OTHER CONSEQUENCES OF FREEZING The freezing process can have unexpected consequences on product quality. For example, some forms of sodium phosphate can crystallize upon slow freezing or annealing, resulting in a pH decrease in the freeze-concentrate (21–23). A decrease in pH has been shown to affect the stability of a drug when frozen and after lyophilization (24–26). Other excipients that crystallize during freezing (for example, mannitol) can lose their ability to stabilize proteins in the dried state (27–30). Some proteins undergo cold denaturation during slow freezing or annealing, which can have deleterious effects on product quality upon reconstitution. Freezing methods can alter the void–solid interfacial area of a lyophilized cake and, inversely, the thickness of its channel walls. An increased surface area correlates with decreased dried product stability for some proteins (31). Freezing by immersing a vial into liquid nitrogen can result in increased protein aggregation (32) or decreased enzyme activity (33) when compared with freezer-cooled samples. Preliminary studies indicate that the freezing method has a significant effect on dried protein stability (Table 2). In addi- tion, reconstitution time could be affected because increasing the surface area may allow faster reconstitution. PRACTICAL ASPECTS Freezing methods are seldom investigated because freezing is difficult to control. Normally, pharmaceutical products supercool to roughly 15 °C before nucleating, which is difficult to overcome by standard processes. Ice might be induced to nucleate at higher temperatures (closer to 0 °C) by conditioning the bottom surface of the glass vial. Nucleation would then occur on the bottom surface, and the ice would propagate in a vertical direction resulting in lower MTRs. Vials with that characteristic are not yet available. Annealing can be more practical but also has limitations. Whether annealing influences the time for lyophilization or the temperature variations of the product during freezing needs to be demonstrated. Shortening the cycle. The freezing method used during lyophilization can have a significant effect on the structure of the ice formed, affecting both the water-vapor flow during primary drying and the final product. Freezing protein solutions in vials with vertically propagated crystals may prevent a thick skin from forming on the top of the lyophilized cake. The structure of vertically frozen material facilitates fast water-vapor flow during primary drying, resulting in lower product temperatures. By increasing the primary drying shelf temperature, the rate of sublimation was 40% faster in our studies for the vertically frozen material than for the standard-frozen material with an equivalent product temperature. We also observed increased sublimation in material annealed during the freezing segment. Decreased surface area correlates with increased product stability for some proteins. Understanding and controlling how a solution freezes can lead to shorter lyophilization cycles and, in some cases, more stable products. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are indebted to Jamie Moore, Mary Cromwell, Anne Nguyen, Al Stern, and Chung Hsu for technical assistance and consultation. REFERENCES (1) S.L. Nail, “The Effect of Chamber Pressure on Heat Transfer in the Freeze Drying of Parenteral Solutions,” PDA J. Pharm. Sci. Technol. 34, 358–368 (1980). (2) M.J. Pikal et al., “Physical Chemistry of FreezeDrying: Measurement of Sublimation Rates for Frozen Aqueous Solutions by a Microbalance Technique,” J. Pharm. Sci. 72, 635–650 (1983). (3) M.J. Pikal, M.L. Roy, and S. Shah, “Mass and Heat Transfer in Vial Freeze-Drying of Pharmaceuticals: Role of the Vial,” J. Pharm. Sci. 73, 1224–1237 (1984). (4) M.J. Pikal, “Use of Laboratory Data in Freeze Drying Process Design: Heat and Mass Transfer Coefficients and the Computer Simulation of Freeze Drying,” PDA J. Parenteral Sci. Technol. 39, 115–139 (1985). (5) R.G. Livesey and T.W.G. Rowe, “A Discussion of the Effect of Chamber Pressure on Heat and Mass Transfer in Freeze-Drying,” J. Parenteral Sci. Technol. 41, 169–171 (1987). (6) M.J. Pikal and S. Shah, “The Collapse Temperature in Freeze Drying: Dependence on Measurement Methodology and Rate of Water Removal from the Glassy Phase,” Int. J. Pharm. 62, 165–186 (1990). (7) M.J. Pikal, “Freeze-Drying of Proteins, Part 1: Process Design,” BioPharm 3(8), 18–27 (1990). (8) B.S. Chang and N.L. Fischer, “Development of an Efficient Single-Step Freeze-Drying Cycle for Protein Formulations,” Pharm. Res. 12, 831–837 (1995). (9) D.E. Overcashier, T.W. Patapoff, and C.C. Hsu, “Lyophilization of Protein Formulations in Vials: Investigation of the Relationship Between Resistance to Vapor Flow During Primary Drying and Small-Scale Product Collapse,” J. Pharm. Sci., 88, 688–695 (1999). (10) M. Kochs et al., “The Influence of the Freezing Process on Vapour Transport During Sublimation in Vacuum-Freeze-Drying of Macroscopic Samples,” Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 36, 1727–1738 (1993). (11) J.A. Searles, J.F. Carpenter, and T.W. Randolph, “The Ice Nucleation Temperature (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) Determines the Primary Drying Rate of Lyophilization for Samples Frozen on a Temperature-Controlled Shelf,” J. Pharm. Sci., 90(7), 860–871 (2001). J.A. Searles, J.F. Carpenter, and T.W. Randolph, “Annealing to Optimize the Primary Drying Rate, Reduce Freezing-Induced Drying Rate Heterogeneity, and Determine Tg in Pharmaceutical Lyophilization,” J. Pharm. Sci. 90, 872–887 (2001). G. Jancso, J. Pupezin, W.A. Van Hook, “The Vapor Pressure of Ice Between +10-2 and 10+2,” J. Phys. Chem. 74, 2984–2989 (1970). L. Gatlin and P.P. DeLuca, “A Study of the Phase Transitions in Frozen Antibiotic Solutions by Differential Scanning Calorimetry,” PDA J. Pharm. Sci. Technol., 34, 398–408 (1980). E. Tarelli et al., “Additives to Biological Substances III: The Moisture Content and Moisture Uptake of Commonly Used Carrier Agents Undergoing Processing Conditions Similar to Those Used in the Preparation of International Biological Standards,” J. Biol. Stand., 15, 331–340 (1987). P.J. Dawson and D.J. Hockley, “Scanning Electron Microscopy of Freeze-Dried Preparations: Relationship of Morphology to Freeze-Drying Parameters,” International Symposium on Biological Product FreezeDrying Parameters, Bethesda, MD. Developments in Biological Standards, Vol. 74 (S. Karger AG, Basel, Switzerland, 1990), pp.185–192. N. Murase, P. Echlin, and F. Franks, “The Structural States of Freeze-Concentrated and Info #16 (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) Freeze-Dried Phosphates Studied by Scanning Electron Microscopy and Differential Scanning Calorimetry,” Cryobiology, 28, 364–375 (1991). B.S. Chang and C.S. Randall, “Use of Subambient Thermal Analysis to Optimize Protein Lyophilization,” Cryobiology, 29, 632–656 (1992). R. Haikala et al., “Polymorphic Changes of Mannitol During Freeze-Drying: Effect of Surface-Active Agents,” PDA J. Pharm. Sci. Technol., 51, 96–101 (1997). N. Milton et al., “Evaluation of Manometric Temperature Measurement as a Method of Monitoring Product Temperature During Lyophilization,” PDA J. Pharm. Sci. Technol., 51, 7–16 (1997). L. van den Berg and D. Rose, “Effect of Freezing on the pH and Composition of Sodium and Potassium Phosphate Solutions: The Reciprocal System KH2PO4-Na2HPO4H2O,” Arch. Biochem. Biophys., 81, 319–329 (1959). N. Murase and F. Franks, “Salt Precipitation During the Freeze-Concentration of Phosphate Buffer Solutions,” Biophys. Chem., 34, 293–300 (1989). G. Gomez, M.J. Pikal, and N. RodriguezHornedo, “Effect of Initial Buffer Composition on pH Changes During Far-from-Equilibrium Freezing of Sodium Phosphate Buffer Solutions,” Pharm. Res., 18, 90–97 (2001). T.J. Anchordoquy and J.F. Carpenter, “Polymers Protect Lactate Dehydrogenase During Freeze-Drying by Inhibiting Continued on page 72 BioPharm MARCH 2002 21 Validation Importance of Freezing continued from page 21 (25) (26) (27) (28) 72 Dissociation in the Frozen State,” Arch. Biochem. Biophys., 332, 231–238 (1996). X.M. Lam et al., “Replacing Succinate with Glycolate Buffer Improves the Stability of Lyophilized Interferon-,” Int. J. Pharm., 142, 85–95 (1996). K.A. Pikal-Cleland et al., “Protein Denaturation During Freezing and Thawing in Phosphate Buffer Systems: Monomeric and Tetrameic -Galactosidase,” Arch. Biochem. Biophys., 384, 398–406 (2000). J.F. Carpenter, S.J. Prestrelski, and T. Arakawa, “Separation of Freezing- and Drying-Induced Denaturation of Lyophilized Proteins Using Stress-Specific Stabilization, I: Enzyme Activity and Calorimetric Studies,” Arch. Biochem. Biophys., 303, 456–464 (1993). K.-i. Izutsu, S. Yoshioka, and T. Terao, “Decreased Protein-Stabilizing Effects of Cryoprotectants Due to Crystallization,” Pharm. Res., 10, 1232–1237 (1993). BioPharm MARCH 2002 (29) H.R. Costantino et al., “Effect of Excipients on the Stability and Structure of Lyophilized Recombinant Human Growth Hormone,” J. Pharm. Sci., 87, 1412–1420 (1998). (30) L. Kreilgaard et al., “Effects of Additives on the Stability of Humicola Lanuginosa Lipase During Freeze-Drying and Storage in the Dried Solid,” J. Pharm. Sci., 88, 281–290 (1999). (31) C.C. Hsu et al., “Surface Denaturation at Solid–Void Interface: A Possible Pathway by Which Opalescent Particulates Form During the Storage of Lyophilized Tissue-Type Plasminogen Activator at High Temperatures,” Pharm. Res., 12, 69–77 (1994). (32) B.S. Chang, B.S. Kendrick, and J.F. Carpenter, “Surface-Induced Denaturation of Proteins During Freezing and Its Inhibition by Surfactants,” J. Pharm. Sci., 85, 1325–1330 (1996). (33) S. Jiang and S.L. Nail, “Effect of Process Conditions on Recovery of Protein Activity After Freezing and Freeze-Drying,” Eur. J. Pharma. Biopharma., 45, 249–257 (1998). BP