Engineering and manufacturing of pharmaceutical co-crystals : a review on solvent-free manufacturing technologies

Design and synthesis of pharmaceutical cocrystals have received great interest in the recent years. Cocrystallization of drug substances offer a tremendous opportunity for the development of new drug products with superior physical and pharmacological properties such as solubility, stability, hydroscopicity, dissolution rates and bioavailability. It is now possible to engineer and develop cocrystals via ‘green chemistry' and environmental friendly approaches such as solid-state synthesis in the absence of organic solvents. In addition, significant efforts are placed on computational screening, cocrystal manufacturing in a continuous manner and real-time monitoring for quality purposes by using various analytical tools. Pharmaceutical cocrystals are not fully exploited yet and there is a lot of ground to cover before they can be successfully utilized as medical products