Co-crystallisation could speed up drug production

In a three-year project funded by EPSRC they are now seeking to understand the science behind the process.

According to Bradford University, co-crystallisation provides an alternative to traditional methods of creating targeted soluble drug compounds and has potential to assist industry in creating new drugs with increased stability, speed and more efficiency.

By creating co-crystals that include the active ingredient and other accepted materials, such as a vitamin or sugar, the solubility of the active ingredient is improved.

Anant Paradkar, professor of Pharmaceutical Engineering Science, said: ‘The technique we’ve been using lends itself well to industrial-scale manufacturing as it’s scalable, continuous and solvent-free. Better understanding of how the crystals are forming will help us to optimise the process.’

The extrusion process that underlies the new technique is said to rely on a combination of high temperatures and shearing forces to convert raw materials into co-crystals. In experiments, co-crystal purity of model drugs such as ibuprofen was shown to be close to 100 per cent.