Screening for cocrystallization tendency: the role of intermolecular interactions

Pharmaceutical cocrystals have rapidly emerged as a new class of API solids with great promise and advantages. Much work has been focused on exploring the crystal engineering and design strategies that facilitate formation of cocrystals of APIs and ligands/cocrystal formers. However, fewer attempts have been made to understand the equilibrium phase behavior and phase transition kinetics of the cocrystallizing solutions. This limited knowledge on the solution physical chemistry often leads to difficulty in screening for potential molecular pairs of API and ligand that form cocrystals effectively. In this study, the long-time self-diffusivities measured using pulsed gradient spin-echo nuclear magnetic resonance (PGSE NMR) are used to characterize the particle interactions in solutions for pharmaceutical cocrystallizing systems. For the pairs of API and ligand that produce cocrystals, the heteromeric attractions between API and ligand are found to be stronger than the homomeric attractions between API molecules and between ligand molecules, suggesting that an energetically favorable condition is induced for the formation of cocrystals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of using the pair contribution of the self-diffusivity as a screening tool for cocrystal formation.