posted on 2019-04-17, 00:00authored byShenye Hu, Manish Kumar Mishra, Changquan Calvin Sun
We report here the
first pharmaceutical twistable hydrogen-bonded
two-dimensional plastic hydrate crystal of a well-known psychoactive
drug, caffeine (CAH). The availability of two pairs of plastically
bendable faces in orthogonal directions allows for twisting of the
CAH crystals to obtain the helical morphology. We further demonstrate
the first pharmaceutical application of such twistable crystals, i.e.,
exceptional tabletability. The plasticity of CAH is comparable to
a commonly used highly plastic tablet diluent, microcrystalline cellulose.
This example suggests that the strategies for designing twistable
crystals, among other potential applications, can be used to effectively
overcome compression problems of certain drugs and enable the development
of high-quality drug tablets.