Kinetics of lisinopril intramolecular cyclization in solid phase monitored by Fourier transform infrared microscopy

Simultaneous determination of several crystal structures from powder mixtures: the combination of powder X-ray diffraction, band-target entropy minimization and Rietveld methods

Crystal structure determination is the key to a detailed understanding of crystalline materials and their properties. This requires either single crystals or high-quality single-phase powder X-ray diffraction data. The present contribution demonstrates a novel method to reconstruct single-phase powder diffraction data from diffraction patterns of mixtures of several components and subsequently to determine the individual crystal structures. The new method does not require recourse to any database of known materials but relies purely on numerical separation of the mixture data into individual component diffractograms. The resulting diffractograms can subsequently be treated like single-phase powder diffraction data,i.e.indexing, structure solution and Rietveld refinement. This development opens up a host of new opportunities in materials science and related areas. For example, crystal structures can now be determined at much earlier stages when only impure samples or polymorphic mixtures are available.

Advances in simultaneous DSC-FTIR microspectroscopy for rapid solid-state chemical stability studies: some dipeptide drugs as examples

The solid-state chemistry of drugs has seen growing importance in the pharmaceutical industry for the development of useful API (active pharmaceutical ingredients) of drugs and stable dosage forms. The stability of drugs in various solid dosage forms is an important issue because solid dosage forms are the most common pharmaceutical formulation in clinical use. In solid-state stability studies of drugs, an ideal accelerated method must not only be selected by different complicated methods, but must also detect the formation of degraded product. In this review article, an analytical technique combining differential scanning calorimetry and Fourier-transform infrared (DSC-FTIR) microspectroscopy simulates the accelerated stability test, and simultaneously detects the decomposed products in real time. The pharmaceutical dipeptides aspartame hemihydrate, lisinopril dihydrate, and enalapril maleate either with or without Eudragit E were used as testing examples. This one-step simultaneous DSC-FTIR technique for real-time detection of diketopiperazine (DKP) directly evidenced the dehydration process and DKP formation as an impurity common in pharmaceutical dipeptides. DKP formation in various dipeptides determined by different analytical methods had been collected and compiled. Although many analytical methods have been applied, the combined DSC-FTIR technique is an easy and fast analytical method which not only can simulate the accelerated drug stability testing but also at the same time enable to explore phase transformation as well as degradation due to thermal-related reactions. This technique offers quick and proper interpretations.

Kinetic model for solid-state degradation of gabapentin

Gabapentin degrades directly to gabapentin-lactam (gaba-L) in the solid state. The objective of this study was to formulate a drug degradation model that accounted for the environmental storage conditions and mechanical stress (prior to storage) on lactamization kinetics. The effects of mechanical stress on drug degradation kinetics were determined by milling gabapentin in a FRITSCH Planetary Micro Mill for 0 and 60 min. The resultant gabapentin powder was stored at 40 °C-60 °C and 5%-30% relative humidity. The rate of gaba-L formation was measured by high-performance liquid chromatography. An irreversible two-step autocatalytic reaction scheme was fit using nonlinear regression methods. The resultant kinetic model was used to predict the time-dependent concentration of degradant of gabapentin tablets prepared under various exemplary manufacturing conditions, thereby demonstrating the ability of the model to link manufacturing variation and chemical stability in solid-state gabapentin formulations.