New forms of old drugs: improving without changing

Abstract

Objectives: In a short approach, we want to present the improvements that have recently been done in the world of new solid forms of known active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). The different strategies will be addressed, and successful examples will be given.

Key findings: This overview presents a possible step to overcome the 10-15 years of hard work involved in launching a new drug in the market: the use of new forms of well-known APIs, and improve their efficiency by enhancing their bioavailability and pharmacokinetics. It discusses some of the latest progresses.

Summary: We want to present, in a brief overview, what recently has been done to improve the discovery of innovative methods of using well-known APIs, and improve their efficiency. Multicomponent crystal forms have shown to be the most promising achievements to accomplish these aims, by altering API physico-chemical properties, such as solubility, thermal stability, shelf life, dissolution rate and compressibility. API-ionic liquids (ILs) and their advantages will be briefly referred. An outline of what has recently been achieved in metal drug coordination and in drug storage and delivery using bio-inspired metal-organic frameworks (BioMOFs) will also be addressed.

Keywords: API metal coordination; drug performance; multicomponent crystals; solid forms; structure-property relationship.