High-Throughput NIR-Chemometric Method for Meloxicam Assay from Powder Blends for Tableting

A near infrared (NIR) method able to directly quantify the active content in pharmaceutical powder blends used for manufacturing meloxicam tablets, without any sample preparation, was developed and fully validated. To develop calibration models for the assay of meloxicam in powder blends for tableting, the NIR reflectance spectra of different meloxicam powder blends prepared according to a calibration protocol was analysed using different pre-processing methods by partial last-square regression (PLS) and principal component regression (PCR). The best calibration model was found when partial last-square regression (PLS) was used as regression algorithm in association with Smoothing-Savitsky as pre-processing spectrum method. The trueness, precision (repeatability and intermediate precision), accuracy, linearity and range of application of the developed NIR method were validated according to the International Conference of Harmonization (ICH) and Medicine European Agency (EMA) guidelines and found to be fit for its intended purpose.