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Last reviewed on 2026-08-01. Where a claim depends on a specific study, the study is described rather than over-claimed.
Lyophilization is a dehydration process that removes water from a frozen material by sublimation under low pressure. The material is first frozen to convert liquid water into ice. Next, the pressure is reduced below the triple point of water so that ice changes directly into vapor without passing through a liquid phase. This step is called primary drying. The result is a porous solid or cake that retains the original shape of the frozen solution.
After primary drying, secondary drying removes water that remains bound to the material. This stage raises the shelf temperature while maintaining low pressure, which encourages desorption of unfrozen water. Residual moisture can be reduced to a low percentage, improving stability for many products. The process parameters, including freezing rate, shelf temperature, and chamber pressure, influence the final pore structure and reconstitution behavior. Control of these variables helps prevent collapse or meltback during drying.
A typical cycle begins with freezing, which fixes the material into a solid and determines ice crystal size. Primary drying then raises heat under vacuum so ice sublimes, often near or below the collapse temperature of the formulation. Secondary drying removes bound water that remains after ice is gone, usually by gently warming the product. Each stage balances heat input against pressure to avoid melting or structural damage. Temperature probes and pressure sensors guide the transition between stages.
In practice, lyophilization is slower and more energy intensive than simple drying. Cycle times can range from hours to several days depending on load, container, and formulation. Amorphous materials may require excipients that help preserve structure during freezing and drying. The method is widely used for biological materials, pharmaceuticals, and foods where heat drying would cause unacceptable change. Open questions remain about scaling cycles between laboratory and production equipment, and this gap affects technology transfer.
| Property | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Common synonyms | Freeze-drying, lyophilisation | Lyophilization is the American spelling; lyophilisation is British |
| Primary drying mechanism | Sublimation of ice | Occurs under vacuum below the triple point |
| Typical chamber pressure | 0.05-0.5 mbar | Range depends on product and equipment |
| Typical shelf temperature during freezing | -40 to -20 °C | Lower temperatures may be used for labile products |
| Resulting product form | Porous cake or powder | Appearance depends on formulation and cycle |
Equipment for lyophilization includes a vacuum chamber, temperature-controlled shelves, a condenser, and a vacuum pump. A refrigeration system cools the shelves and condenser below the product's freezing point. Process monitoring often uses Pirani and capacitance manometers, thermocouples, and resistance sensors. Cycle development balances product quality with time and energy use. Some products are annealed during freezing to improve crystallization of bulking agents. Open questions remain about scaling cycles between laboratory, pilot, and production freeze-dryers.
Lyophilization, also called freeze-drying, removes water from a frozen material by sublimation under reduced pressure. The process begins with freezing, which converts free water into ice and may also produce a glassy phase. Primary drying then lowers chamber pressure so ice sublimes directly to vapor without passing through a liquid stage. Secondary drying raises the temperature modestly to remove bound water. The result is a porous, dry solid that usually reconstitutes quickly. Each stage influences pore structure, residual moisture, and stability.
The physics of lyophilization depends on phase boundaries and heat and mass transfer. During primary drying, heat supplied to the product must equal the latent heat of sublimation, while water vapor moves through the drying cake to the condenser. If shelf temperature or pressure is set too high, the ice front can exceed the collapse temperature, causing meltback or pore collapse. If conditions are too cold, drying slows and costs rise. Formulation excipients, vial geometry, and freezing rate alter these limits.
A typical cycle begins with freezing, sometimes including an annealing step to control ice crystal size. Freezing conditions influence the pore network that later allows vapor escape. During primary drying, shelf temperature and chamber pressure are set so heat enters the product while its temperature stays below the collapse or eutectic point. Secondary drying then raises the shelf temperature to desorb bound water and lower residual moisture. Cycle design depends on formulation, fill volume, container type, and equipment capability.
The physics of lyophilization couples heat transfer, mass transfer, and phase behavior. Sublimation requires a vapor pressure difference between the ice front and the chamber, and the dried layer adds resistance to vapor flow. Amorphous formulations are characterized by a glass transition temperature of the maximally freeze-concentrated solute, often denoted Tg'. Crystalline bulking agents can provide structure, while amorphous excipients stabilize labile components. Open questions remain about spatial heterogeneity, edge effects, and how laboratory cycles scale to production.
Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain (Hawaii hotspot) Louisville Ridge (Louisville hotspot) Walvis Ridge (Gough and Tristan hotspot) Kodiak–Bowie Seamount chain (Bowie hotspot) Cobb–Eickelberg Seamount chain (Cobb hotspot) New England Seamounts (New England hotspot) Anahim Volcanic Belt (Anahim hotspot) Mackenzie dike swarm (Mackenzie hotspot) Great Meteor hotspot track (New England hotspot) St. Helena Seamount Chain–Cameroon Volcanic Line (Saint Helena hotspot) Southern Mascarene Plateau–Chagos-Maldives-Laccadive Ridge (Réunion hotspot) Ninety East Ridge (Kerguelen hotspot) Tuamotu–Line Island chain (Easter hotspot) Austral–Gilbert–Marshall chain (Macdonald hotspot) Juan Fernández Ridge (Juan Fernández hotspot) Tasmantid Seamount Chain (Tasmantid hotspot) Canary Islands (Canary hotspot) Cape Verde (Cape Verde hotspot)
==== Muscle ==== Glycogen storage diseases that involve skeletal muscle typically have exercise-induced (dynamic) symptoms, such as premature muscle fatigue, rather than fixed weakness (static) symptoms. Differential diagnoses for glycogen storage diseases that involve fixed muscle weakness, particularly of the proximal muscles, would be an inflammatory myopathy or a limb-girdle muscular dystrophy. For those with exercise intolerance and/or proximal muscle weakness, the endocrinopathies should be considered. The timing of the symptoms of exercise intolerance, such as muscle fatigue and cramping, is important in order to help distinguish it from other metabolic myopathies such as fatty acid metabolism disorders. Problems originating within the circulatory system, rather than the muscle itself, can produce exercise-induced muscle fatigue, pain and cramping that alleviates with rest, resulting from inadequate blood flow (ischemia) to the muscles. Ischemia that often produces symptoms in the leg muscles includes intermittent claudication, popliteal artery entrapment syndrome, and chronic venous insufficiency. Diseases disrupting the neuromuscular junction can cause abnormal muscle fatigue, such as myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease. Similar, are Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome (autoimmune) and the congenital myasthenic syndromes (genetic). Diseases can disrupt glycogen metabolism secondary to the primary disease.
Radon was discovered in 1899 by Ernest Rutherford and Robert B. Owens at McGill University in Montreal. It was the fifth radioactive element to be discovered, after uranium, thorium, radium, and polonium. In 1899, Pierre and Marie Curie observed that the gas emitted by radium remained radioactive for a month. Later that year, Rutherford and Owens noticed variations when trying to measure radiation from thorium oxide. Rutherford noticed that the compounds of thorium continuously emit a radioactive gas that remains radioactive for several minutes, and called this gas "emanation" (from Latin: emanare, to flow out, and emanatio, expiration), and later "thorium emanation" ("Th Em"). In 1900, Friedrich Ernst Dorn reported some experiments in which he noticed that radium compounds emanate a radioactive gas he named "radium emanation" ("Ra Em"). In 1901, Rutherford and Harriet Brooks demonstrated that the emanations are radioactive, but credited the Curies for the discovery of the element. In 1903, similar emanations were observed from actinium by André-Louis Debierne, and were called "actinium emanation" ("Ac Em"). Several shortened names were soon suggested for the three emanations: exradio, exthorio, and exactinio in 1904; radon (Ro), thoron (To), and akton or acton (Ao) in 1918; radeon, thoreon, and actineon in 1919, and eventually radon, thoron, and actinon in 1920.
: most of the particles entering the control volume pass through quickly, but most of the particles contained in the control volume pass through slowly. Examples include water in a lake with the inlet and outlet that are close together and water vapor rising from the ocean surface, which for the most part returns quickly to the ocean, while for the rest is retained in the atmosphere and returns much later in the form of rain.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
== See also == Boyle's law – Relation between gas pressure and volume Combined gas law – Combination of Charles', Boyle's and Gay-Lussac's gas laws Gay-Lussac's law – Relationship between pressure and temperature of a gas at constant volume Avogadro's law – Relationship between volume and amount of a gas at constant temperature and pressure Ideal gas law – Equation of the state of a hypothetical ideal gas Hand boiler – Science demonstrator and novelty item Thermal expansion – Tendency of matter to change volume in response to a change in temperature
As of 2011, levothyroxine was the second-most commonly prescribed medication in the US, with 23.8 million prescriptions filled each year. In 2023, it was the third most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 80 million prescriptions.
Title II of Act, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), helped align US law with the UN Single Convention, with "many of the provisions of the CSA ... enacted by Congress for the specific purpose of ensuring U.S. compliance with the treaty." The CSA's five drug Schedules, an implementation of the Single Convention's four schedule system, categorized drugs based on medical value and potential for abuse. Under the new drug schedules, cannabis was provisionally placed by the administration in the most restrictive Schedule I, "until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue." As mandated by the CSA, Nixon appointed the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, known as the Shafer Commission, to investigate.
=== Pharmacokinetics === The naturally occurring native GLP-1 hormone is considered a peptide hormone. It has a half-life of only about two minutes, because the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) enzyme rapidly breaks it down. As a result, different GLP-1 agonist drugs are modified in various ways to extend the half-life, resulting in drugs that can be dosed daily, weekly, or less often. Many commonly used synthetic GLP-1 agonists are delivered weekly by subcutaneous injection, which is a barrier to their use and reason for discontinuation. Most GLP-1 medications are approved by the FDA and sold as drug-device combination products, which include auto-injecting pens. Self-injected drugs are especially difficult for people with vision or motor difficulties, which commonly accompany type 2 diabetes. Attempts to develop an orally bioavailable GLP-1 agonist, either a modified peptide, as in the case of oral semaglutide, or a small molecule drug, have produced additional drug candidates. Other companies have tested inhaled or transdermal administration. An oral semaglutide pill was approved by the FDA in December 2025 and entered mass production in January 2026.
There are three amino acids with side chains that are cations at neutral pH: arginine (Arg, R), lysine (Lys, K) and histidine (His, H). Arginine has a charged guanidino group and lysine a charged alkyl amino group, and are fully protonated at pH 7. Histidine's imidazole group has a pKa of 6.0, and is only around 10% protonated at neutral pH. Because histidine is easily found in its basic and conjugate acid forms it often participates in catalytic proton transfers in enzyme reactions.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Lyophilization removes water by sublimation from a frozen material, while evaporation changes liquid water into vapor. The low-pressure freezing step avoids the liquid phase and can preserve heat-sensitive structures.
Vacuum lowers the pressure below the triple point of water, allowing ice to sublimate directly into vapor. It also helps remove water vapor from the product chamber and shortens primary drying.
Many aqueous solutions and suspensions can be freeze-dried, but some formulations collapse or do not form a stable cake. The process requires careful formulation and cycle development.
Primary drying removes ice by sublimation under vacuum. Secondary drying removes water that is bound to the material, often by warming the product after most ice has left. Both stages occur below temperatures that would cause unwanted melting.