Cocrystal Applications in Drug Delivery

Cocrystal Applications in Drug Delivery

Drug

Drug delivery systems

Pharmaceutic

Over the past two decades, considerable research efforts in academia and industry have gone into pharmaceutical cocrystals. As a result, a large number of studies on both fundamental aspects and applications of cocrystallisation have been published, and a few cocrystals are now on the market or in clinical trial phases, e.g., sacubitril-disodium valsartan-water (EntrestoTM), escitalopram oxalate-oxalic acid (Lexapro®), ertuglifozin-L-pyroglutamic acid and tramadol-celecoxib. The FDA defines pharmaceutical cocrystals as “crystalline materials composed of two or more different molecules, typically active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and cocrystal formers (‘coformers’), in the same crystal lattice” . Cocrystallisation is an attractive strategy to modify and improve the physicochemical properties of an API without making covalent changes to the drug molecule itself. Very often cocrystals are designed to tackle the poor dissolution behaviour and low bioavailability of Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) class II and IV drugs that make up 70% of the drug candidates in the development pipeline. However, chemical stability, hygroscopicity, mechanical, and flow properties have also been improved through cocrystal formation. Furthermore, cocrystallisation can be used as a purification and enantiomeric separation method.

Andrea Erxleben (Ed.)

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceutics/special issues/cocrystal applications

MDPI
St. Alban-Anlage 66
4052 Basel, Switzerland

Andrea Erxleben
J®F

CC BY-NC-ND.

PDF

English

Textbooks

ISBN 978-3-03943-983-6 (Hbk); ISBN 978-3-03943-984-3 (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-03943-984-3