Structural Characterization of the New Generation of Drugs and Biomaterials: Application of NMR Crystallography

Abstract

A sustained effort to maximize the therapeutic effect of newly discovered active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) leads to the search for and development of advanced drug formulations. In this regard, a range of multicomponent and nanostructured systems that often combine the properties of solid and liquid materials have been developed. Besides the sophisticated supramolecular synthesis the development of these systems also requires in-depth view into their local architecture at atomic-resolution level. As these materials naturally exist at the borderline between the solid and liquid phases, the high-quality diffraction data are inherently unavailable. Therefore the structural description of these materials requires development of novel and highly efficient strategies. The aim of all this process is formulation of computation-experimental procedures allowing for precise characterization of the complex pharmaceutical systems including composite solids, nanocrystalline systems as well as partially ordered materials. In this regard, NMR crystallography belongs among the most successful approaches. In this contribution we report our recent achievements in characterizing atomic-resolution structure of complex pharmaceutical solids such as peptide derivatives of boronic acid, hybrid organic-inorganic liquisolid drug delivery systems, polymer-drug solid dispersions and mucoadhesive buccal films.