Manufacturing of Pharmaceutical Cocrystals: Review

Author Name : Pranjal S. Thakare, Chaitali D. Malode, Sushama R. Lokhande, Anand D. Savkare, Sandeep B. Khatale

ABSTRACT

There has been a lot of interest in the design and synthesis of pharmaceutical cocrystals in recent years. Cocrystal is a crystalline structure composed of at least two components, where the components may be atoms, ions, or molecules. Cocrystals consist of a single crystalline phase of multiple components in a given stoichiometric ratio, where the different molecular species interact by hydrogen bonding or by other non-covalent bonds. Because of its strength and directionality, the hydrogen bond has been the most important interaction in cocrystal formation.Cocrystallization raises the potential for the development of new drug entities with improved stability, solubility, hygroscopicity, tablatability, and bioavailability. This review summarises a comparison of various (traditional and novel) methods of preparing cocrystals. Cocrystals were traditionally prepared using solvent evaporation, grinding, and slurry methods, but each method had its own set of limitations. Hot-melt extrusion, supercritical fluid technology, spray drying, sonocrystallization, resonate acoustic mixing, freeze-drying,and laser irradiation are some recently adopted cocrystals preparation methods. The goal of adopting new methods is to overcome the limitations of traditional Cocrystallization methods and to create simpler steps and a continuous process for cocrystals production. This article gives brief information regarding each method adopted to manufacture cocrystals, along with the advantages and limitations of each method.

Keywords: Cocrystal, Hot melt extrusion, Slurry method, Solvent evaporation. Supercritical fluid