What is Sucrose? It’s Types And Pharmaceutical Applications
What is Sucrose?
It is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose and is also known as saccharose. Taking sucrose as a raw material, a range of products with different specific sizes are manufactured.
Saccharose has a wide range of applications in all industries. Every saccharose manufacturer takes care of the quality, hygiene, and purity of the sucrose. There is no single sucrose alternative in the world, and hence, maintaining its properties is a challenge.
It also comes in two colors, i.e., white and brown (brown sugar is a mix of white sugar with a significant amount of molasses content).
The applications of sucrose are segmented into two industries;
- Pharma industry
- Consumer & food industry
In this blog, we shall specifically walk through the pharmaceutical applications of sucrose.
Sucrose in Pharmaceuticals
Also known as saccharose, has been prominent since antiquity for its sweetness. It is used in medications to impart taste to unpalatable chemicals. It is found in chewable tablets, syrups, dry syrups, sachets, lozenges, and mouthwash. In the pharma industry, sucrose is used as an excipient, i.e., an inactive substance that acts as the dosage carrier for an active drug.
Its role in pharma ranges from adding bulk and consistency to the tablets to making unpalatable medicines palatable. Furthermore, if the tablets are coated with pharma-grade sugar, the tablet is protected from the damaging effects of air and moisture; it becomes easy to swallow; and when combined with coloring agents, it becomes identifiable.
Lately, the applications of sucrose have not been confined to adding bulk and taste to medicines, but also as-
- Monoclonal antibody (mAbs) stabilization
- Media supplementation
- Antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) stabilization
- Stem cell preservation
- Vaccine stabilization
- Peptide stabilization
Moreover, in the cosmetics industry, it is greatly used for its exfoliation and moisturizing properties. In lipsticks, it extracts moisture and extends the color. It is also included in body scrub formulations for its exfoliation and de-tanning properties.
Types of pharma-grade sucrose
- Sucrose-special particle size
It is a white crystalline coarse sugar that is super-fine and homogenous in nature. It is used in dry syrups, pellets, sustained-release drug manufacturing, and much more.
It tends to prevent microbial growth and enhance the texture of drugs. It is hygroscopic, i.e., it absorbs moisture from the air.
It provides solution-phase stabilization, and cryo- and lyo-protection for biological products.
- Low endotoxin sucrose
This is specifically used in the biopharmaceutical industry to stabilize proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates throughout the formulation and freezing of therapeutics.
This highly pure low endotoxin sucrose is also used as a cryopreservative and media supplement in various cell-based bioprocesses.
It is also preferred to trehalose where solubility and viscosity issues are crucial.
- Milled sucrose
It is a unique pharma-grade saccharose that can be easily compressed. It is an ideal choice where rapid dissolution is paramount.
These sugars have regulated particle size and achieve consistent tight particle size distribution, leading to the manufacturing of high-quality drugs.
Also, due to its greater availability, it is used in oil-based suspensions.
- Confectioner’s sugar
It is a crystal white powder of sugar that is easily compressible. A small quantity of starch is added to the sugar to mitigate caking.
It is used for granulation, sachet filling, and coating of drugs.
As it is finely powdered, it enhances the compressibility factor in the drugs and can also be used as a diluent in tablets.
- Compressible sugar
It is a white, granular, and free-flowing powder with high purity. This sugar is used as an excipient in the pharma industry as it has properties like high flowability, low hygroscopicity, high compressibility, and inertness.
It is used as an excipient in chewable, effervescent, and orodispersible tablets. It is also used in some drugs as a sachet filler.
- Light Brown Pharma Sugar
This sugar is highly pure, dry, light brown, free-flow crystalline sugar that is used as an excipient in pharma products.
Besides that, it is also used for sachet filling and mixing active pharmaceutical products. It can also add brown color to the drug formulation.
- Sucrose – LR
LR stands for Laboratory Reagent. With the highest quality sugar crystals, this sugar is used in most biotech industries for analytical preparations.
It is also used for tissue culture, where the purity required is the highest.
- Sucrose – AR
AR stands for Analytical Reagent. As the name suggests, it is used in analytical reagents.
It is highly pure sugar with zero contaminants and additives. It can be either used as an excipient or as a coating for tablets.
Summing Up
M.B. Sugars – the leading pharma-grade sugar manufacturer in India. They have the latest technical equipment that serves the purpose of complete purity and hygiene. They meet international standards and are the only company in the world to manufacture DMF-grade sucrose.
M. B. Sugars is one of the two in the world and the only Indian company that manufactures Low Endotoxin Sucrose which is highly pure. It is manufactured in the utmost hygienic environment with advanced technology and is used in injections.
We hope that the blog was helpful, and to know more about our products, scroll through our website.
