-What are the latest techniques used for masking of the bitter taste in drugs how stable are they? Can we mask the bitterness of API's /drug's only with using Flavors? mostly in Orally Disintegrating Strip / Tablet. Could anyone suggest me?.
Your query is very important for drug products especially intended for oral administration. It not only gives a better acceptance to the patients/users (mostly pediatric and geriatric) also develop a reputation of the product for its manufacturer. Most important aspect is to decide whether to mask the taste of the drug (API) itself or to the pharmaceutical formulation? If you can afford to mask the taste of the drug/API then mostly pro-drug, complexation, salt formation, and addition of excipients like sweetener/flavoring agents are preferred. All these act by different mechanisms, either by coating the taste buds (receptors) or by masking the bitter loci of the API. However, the latest advancement in this area are (i) employment of co-processed excipients, (ii) use of effervescent excipients, (iii) Lycopodium-derived microcapsules, (iv) use of pH sensitive polymers, (v) nanohydridizing and wet spherical agglomeration techniques etc.
Besides, using taste-masking agents with flavorants and flavor enhancers, you can use carriers, adsorbents or complexing agents. There's a lot of techniques for taste-making but the better and most effective one (from my point of view) is spray-drying.
Well, there are many techniques for taste maskings which are being used now a days like coating the drug with polymers forming the micro-spheres by spray drying, salt formation, Complexation, adding the sweeteners and flavors. Based upon the economical factor and stability we have to select the best out of these technique.
if you have tried using a flavors, you can use several alternative methods i.e. microencapsulation using insoluble polymers in mouth pH, complexation, pro-drug approach that using a moiety afect on a reduce solubility, or using chemical approach as a taste inhibitor