Towards an understanding of the propensity for crystalline hydrate formation by molecular compounds.

Hydrates are technologically important and ubiquitous yet they remain a poorly understood and understudied class of molecular crystals. In this work, we attempt to rationalize propensity towards hydrate formation through crystallization studies of molecules that lack strong hydrogen-bond donor groups. A Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) survey indicates that the statistical occurrence of hydrates in 124 molecules that contain five- and six-membered -heterocyclic aromatic moieties is 18.

Pharmaceutical cocrystals: along the path to improved medicines.

Cocrystals, a long known but understudied class of crystalline solids, have attracted interest from crystal engineers and pharmaceutical scientists in the past decade and are now an integral part of the preformulation stage of drug development. This is largely because cocrystals that contain a drug molecule, pharmaceutical cocrystals, can modify physicochemical properties without the need for covalent modification of the drug molecule. This review presents a brief history of cocrystals before addressing recent advances in design, discovery and development of pharmaceutical cocrystals that have occurred since an earlier review published in 2004.

Impact of pharmaceutical cocrystals: the effects on drug pharmacokinetics.

Introduction: Pharmaceutical cocrystallization has emerged in the past decade as a new strategy to enhance the clinical performance of orally administered drugs. A pharmaceutical cocrystal is a multi-component crystalline material in which the active pharmaceutical ingredient is in a stoichiometric ratio with a second compound that is generally a solid under ambient conditions. The resulting cocrystal exhibits different solid-state thermodynamics, leading to changes in physicochemical properties that offer the potential to significantly modify drug pharmacokinetics.