Solid-state NMR elucidates the ability of cocrystallisation to tame the dynamics occurring in a pharmaceutical
Dynamics can render an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) difficult to crystallise, making the development of a commercially relevant process challenging, while also complicating the process of structural characterisation. A collaboration between academia (University of Warwick) and industry (AstraZeneca) with funding from Innovate UK published in CrystEngComm reports an instance of taming the dynamics in Efavirenz, an anti-HIV pharmaceutical, using cocrystallisation. The study provides the first systematic investigation on how the dynamics are influenced by the addition of a coformer. X-ray crystallography, DFT calculations, and solid-state NMR results support that the Efavirenz cocrystals have remarkably less dynamics than pure Efavirenz.
Szell, P. M., Lewandowski, J. R., Blade, H., Hughes, L. P., Lill, S. O. N., & Brown, S. P. (2021). Taming the dynamics in a pharmaceutical by cocrystallization: investigating the impact of the coformer by solid-state NMR. CrystEngComm, 23(39), 6859-6870.
