El fakhri, Rehab M Mohamed
(2018)
Cryomilling for formulation.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
The pharmaceutical industry has experienced an increase in the amount of development candidates with low aqueous solubility and accordingly poor bioavailability. In order for this problem to be solved, amorphisation is thought to be the most favourable solution.
The amorphous state is higher in free energy thus higher in solubility when compared to the crystalline form. Milling and specially cryomilling is a very unique technique for providing of the crystalline to amorphous transformation since there are no heat or solvents involved.
Phthalic acid, isophthalic acid and terephthalic acid, individual and pair mixtures, are crystalline organic non medicinal compounds, which have been used for the first time as model compounds to investigate whether cryogenic milling can induce crystal to amorphous transformation and if the preparation of pair mixtures could affect the recrystallization rate of the subjected materials or not. The materials were cryomilled and analysed by DSC, XRPD, and FTIR. It was found that only terephthalic acid become amorphous after cryomilling, and even after the cryomilled sample been stored for three weeks DSC thermogram still detects recrystallization exothermic along with the XRPD pattern, which shows a very broad peaks indicative of particle size reduction. Pair mixtures were also studied and analysed by DSC and XRPD. Phthalic acid/isophthalic acid, isophthalic acid/terephthalic acid, phthalic acid/terephthalic acid were cryomilled together and mixed physically after been cryomilled separately. XRPD results show that unlike the cryomilled separately mixtures, phthalic acid/ isophthalic acid, isophthalic acid/terephthalic acid, terephthalic acid/phthalic acid cryomilled together samples produces a synergistic effect in which the Bragg peaks of both phthalic acid and isophthalic acid are suppressed. It appears that co cryomilling of these pair mixtures together resulted in the production of a new material that could potentially either be two-component single phase (nano-sized co-crystal), or a new polymorphic form of either phthalic acid, isophthalic acid or terephthalic acid.
Single-component of aspirin (ASP), paracetamol (PCM) and caffeine (CAFF), along with multi-component systems of paracetamol/aspirin, paracetamol/caffeine and aspirin/caffeine were milled at room temperature and by a cryomill. The milled samples were analysed using DSC, XRPD and FTIR. It was noted that there are no clear indications of crystal to amorphous transformation in all three materials. When milling aspirin at room temperature a marked reduction in the melting point was observed.
Generally, a reduction in the melting point is either attributed to particle size effects, polymorphism, impurities and decomposition. In this case, the decrease in the melting point was only noticed when aspirin was milled at room temperature, so it is possible that the heat generated during the milling process resulted in chemical decomposition of aspirin to salicylic acid. Anhydrous caffeine is acknowledged to have two polymorphic forms, Form II which is considered to be stable at room temperature until ~145 °C.
Form I is stable from ~145 °C to its melting point ~ 236 °C. This polymorphic transformation was detected by DSC, XRPD and hot stage microscope and it was noticed only with the as received and the room temperature milled samples. Cryomilled caffeine data showed only the presence of Form I. On the other hand, for the cryomilled multi-component systems DSC and hot stage microscope images confirmed the eutectic formation with a composition of 45:55% w/w (PCM:ASP), 50:50% (ASP:CAFF) AND 50:50% (PCM:CAFF). The obtained data were compared with room temperature milled and the theoretical values resulted from Van Laar equation.
Solid pharmaceuticals represent heterogeneous systems that typically consist of one or more active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and a number of excipients. Multi-component systems from mixing aspirin, paracetamol and caffeine with different excipients, which included sucrose, lactose monohydrate, xylitol and trehalose dihydrate were prepared by the use of a cryomill and were analyesd by DSC and XRPD. It was found from the XRPD data that mixing both sucrose and lactose monohydrate respectively with ASP, PCM and CAFF would produce more of a synergistic effect than xylitol and trehalose dihydrate. Cryomilling caffeine/sucrose and caffeine/lactose resulted in a production of a new XRPD trace that cannot be described in terms of a linear combination of caffeine, sucrose and lactose monohydrate. A new material was therefore formed as a result of cryomilling which has not been reported before.
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