Search

Purpose Study on curcumin dissolved in natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) was aimed at exploiting their beneficial properties as drug carriers. Methods The concentration of dissolved curcumin in NADES was measured. Simulated gastrointestinal fluids were used to determine the concentration of curcumin and quantum chemistry computations were performed for clarifying the origin of curcumin solubility enhancement in NADES. Results NADES comprising choline chloride and glycerol had the highest potential for curcumin dissolution. This system was also successfully applied as an extraction medium for obtaining curcuminoids from natural sources, as well as an effective stabilizer preventing curcumin degradation from sunlight. The solubility of curcumin in simulated gastrointestinal fluids revealed that the significant increase of bioavailability takes place in the small intestinal fluid. Conclusions Suspension of curcumin in NADES offers beneficial properties of this new liquid drug formulation starting from excreting from natural sources, through safe storage and ending on the final administration route. Therefore, there is a possibility of using a one-step process with this medium. The performed quantum chemistry computations clearly indicated the origin of the enhanced solubility of curcumin in NADES in the presence of intestinal fluids. Direct intermolecular contacts leading to hetero-molecular pairs with choline chloride and glycerol are responsible for elevating the bulk concentration of curcumin. Choline chloride plays a dominant role in the system and the complexes formed with curcumin are the most stable among all possible homo- and hetero-molecular pairs that can be found in NADES-curcumin systems.

A new method of Hansen solubility parameters (HSPs) prediction was developed by combining the multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARSplines) methodology with a simple multivariable regression involving 1D and 2D PaDEL molecular descriptors. In order to adopt the MARSplines approach to QSPR/QSAR problems, several optimization procedures were proposed and tested. The effectiveness of the obtained models was checked via standard QSPR/QSAR internal validation procedures provided by the QSARINS software and by predicting the solubility classification of polymers and drug-like solid solutes in collections of solvents. By utilizing information derived only from SMILES strings, the obtained models allow for computing all of the three Hansen solubility parameters including dispersion, polarization, and hydrogen bonding. Although several descriptors are required for proper parameters estimation, the proposed procedure is simple and straightforward and does not require a molecular geometry optimization. The obtained HSP values are highly correlated with experimental data, and their application for solving solubility problems leads to essentially the same quality as for the original parameters. Based on provided models, it is possible to characterize any solvent and liquid solute for which HSP data are unavailable.

The cocrystallization landscape of benzamide and urea interacting with aliphatic and aromatic carboxylic acids was studied both experimentally and theoretically. Ten new cocrystals of benzamide were synthesized using an oriented samples approach via a fast dropped evaporation technique. Information about types of known bi-component cocrystals augmented with knowledge of simple binary eutectic mixtures was used for the analysis of virtual screening efficiency among 514 potential pairs involving aromatic carboxylic acids interacting with urea or benzamide. Quantification of intermolecular interaction was achieved by estimating the excess thermodynamic functions of binary liquid mixtures under supercooled conditions within a COSMO-RS framework. The smoothed histograms suggest that slightly more potential pairs of benzamide are characterized in the attractive region compared to urea. Finally, it is emphasized that prediction of cocrystals of urea is fairly direct, while it remains ambiguous for benzamide paired with carboxylic acids. The two known simple eutectics of urea are found within the first two quartiles defined by excess thermodynamic functions, and all known cocrystals are outside of this range belonging to the third or fourth quartile. On the contrary, such a simple separation of positive and negative cases of benzamide miscibility in the solid state is not observed. The difference in properties between urea and benzamide R2,2(8) heterosynthons is also documented by alterations of substituent effects...

In this paper droplet evaporative crystallization of salicylic acid (SA) and acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) crystals on different surfaces, such as glass, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), and paraffin was studied. The obtained crystals were analyzed using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) technique. In order to better understand the effect of the surface on evaporative crystallization, crystals deposited on glass were scraped off. Moreover, evaporative crystallization of a large volume of solution was performed. As we found, paraffin which is non-polar surface promotes formation of crystals morphologically similar to those obtained via bulk evaporative crystallization. On the other hand, when crystallization is carried out on the polar surfaces (glass and PVA), there is a significant orientation effect. This phenomenon is manifested by the reduction of the number of peaks in PXRD spectrum recorded for deposited on the surface crystals. Noteworthy, reduction of PXRD signals is not observed for powder samples obtained after scraping crystals off the glass. In order to explain the mechanism of carboxylic crystals growth on the polar surfaces, quantum-chemical computations were performed. It has been found that crystal faces of the strongest orientation effect can be characterized by the highest surface densities of intermolecular interactions energy (IIE). In case of SA and ASA crystals formed on the polar surfaces the most dominant faces are characterized by the highest adhesive and cohesive properties. This suggests that the selection rules of the orientation effect comes directly from surface IIE densities.

Crystal growth behavior of benzoic acid crystals on different surfaces was examined. The performed experiments documented the existence of very strong influence introduced by polar surfaces as glass, gelatin, and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) on the growth of benzoic acid crystals. These surfaces impose strong orientation effect resulting in a dramatic reduction of number of faces seen with x-ray powder diffractions (XPRD). However, scrapping the crystal off the surface leads to a morphology that is similar to the one observed for bulk crystallization. The surfaces of low wettability (paraffin) seem to be useful for preparation of amorphous powders, even for well-crystallizable compounds. The performed quantum chemistry computations characterized energetic contributions to stabilization of morphology related faces. It has been demonstrated, that the dominant face (002) of benzoic acid crystal, growing on polar surfaces, is characterized by the highest densities of intermolecular interaction energies determining the highest cohesive properties among all studied faces. Additionally, the inter-layer interactions, which stand for adhesive properties, are also the strongest in the case of this face. Thus, quantum chemistry computations providing detailed description of energetic contributions can be successfully used for clarification of adhesive and cohesive nature of benzoic acids crystal faces.