Industrial Visit to Freethink Technologies
Date: August 28, 2018
Industry Visited: FreeThink
35 Northeast Industrial Road, 2nd floor, Branford, CT 06405
On August 28, 2018, I had this wonderful opportunity to visit FreeThink Technologies, Branford, CT. My father, Gautam Naik, knew the President and the founder of FreeThink, Ken Waterman through LinkedIn. He scheduled a visit to the labs of FreeThink to allow me to gain an exposure to a lab environment.
Basically, FreeThink is into drug and other stability determination in short times by advanced testing and mathematical modeling. They have developed a software called the ASAP prime®(Accelerated Stability Assessment Program) to allow them to rapidly model the stability of medicines and evaluate the product shelf life. It is claimed that the software enables the scientists to perform this task and provide reliable results in weeks instead of months or years through traditional methods. In this visit, I learned that there are many factors to consider when evaluating product shelf life. These factors include humidity and temperature of the storage place, the quality of the packaging and the testing period. It was quite interesting to see how these factors influence the drug shelf life.
Consequently, while on the tour, we saw their fully equipped labs. They had sophisticated equipment to test the effects of drug product tablets. The labs also had many ovens and refrigerators to control exposure conditions of such products. Finally, they had equipment for making tablets to develop methods of improving products with poor stability. The pictures of some of the lab equipment are also attached below.
To evaluate the tablet stability they use methods like forced degradation by exposing the tablets to heat, light, chemicals speeding the drug oxidation, acids, and bases. They also use liquid and gas chromatography to evaluate the stability. Interestingly, the stability of most
drug products is set by very low levels of degradation products that form over time and could
represent a safety risk to patients. They evaluate drug stability by testing various climate condition by using their highly developed technology.
Overall this visit was quite insightful and provided me with an opportunity to see how the lab works!
Here is a screenshot of ASAP Prime depicting the graphs and data demonstrating a tablet shelf life and stability:
These are various types of equipment which are used in the labs of the Freethink Technologies
Here is a picture of Mr. Waterman and me:
The types of equipment below tests effects of various climatic conditions on the tablets
Works Cited:
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