Here Dr. Thomas Kendall, application specialist at crystallisation and solid-state specialist Technobis Crystallization Systems, gives a perspective on the benefits of co-crystals and explains how they can be screened.
Key insights:
- Co-crystallisation has become an attractive alternative to improve the physiochemical properties of drugs, like solubility and even taste, without affecting their pharmacology.
- Co-crystals are used in the antipsychotic drug, Ablify - whereby scientists used a co-crystal with fumaric acid to ensure timely dissolution and improve the solubility and thermal stability of the drug.
- Co-crystals can be formed with sweeteners and taste maskers as co-formers, which leads to an improvement in the taste of a drug.
Over the last decade, co-crystallisation has become an attractive alternative to improve the physiochemical properties of drugs without affecting their pharmacology. As a result of the pharmaceutical benefits co-crystals exhibit, industrial interest is on the rise.