Screening, crystal structures and solubility studies of a series of multidrug salt hydrates and cocrystals of fenamic acids with trimethoprim and sulfamethazine

Abstract Multidrug solids have a potential use to efficiently treat and control a superfluity of medical conditions. To address the current drawbacks of drug development in R&D, it was targeted to achieve new pharmaceutical solid forms of fenamic acids having improved solubility and thermal stability. Subsequently, five new multicomponent solids consisting of three salt hydrates of trimethoprim (TMP) with mefenamic acid (TMP-MFA-H2O), tolfenamic acid (TMP-TFA-H2O) and flufenamic acid (TMP-FFA-H2O), and two cocrystals of sulfamethazine (SFZ) with flufenamic acid (SFZ-FFA) and niflumic acid (SFZ-NFA) were prepared by liquid assisted grinding. Looking at the structures of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) molecules, it was quite expected that a wide range of supramolecular synthons would lead to co-crystallization. New forms were characterized thoroughly by various solid-state techniques, including single crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD), which provided details of hydrogen bonding, molecular packing and interactions between drug and coformer. Kinetic solubility at pH 7.4 buffer study has been carried out and a comparison is made with respect to the parent drugs. A significant enhancement of NSAIDs solubility was observed in all salt hydrate systems of TMP. Thus with increasing physicochemical properties such as improved solubility further leads to the enhancement of bioavailability, which has implications to overcoming the formulation related problems of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).