Chapter 7 - Drug nanocrystals: emerging trends in pharmaceutical industries

Abstract

Drug nanocrystals with a particle size of 10–100nm are obtained from individual or mixed techniques. Different approaches such as bottom-up and top-down can be used to produce these drug nanocrystals. The pharmaceutical industry faces the challenge of poorly water-soluble drugs. Approximately 50% of pharmaceutical medicines are poorly water soluble. Major problems associated with drugs are low oral bioavailability and low saturation solubility. As the nanotechnology field grows, it has tremendous potential applications in the field of medicine. By increasing water solubility, researchers can safely increase the saturation solubility of drugs. Conventional approaches are used to tackle the problem of solubility by making salt as an active ingredient so that water solubility gets increased. However, this approach is not true in all the cases. Only few molecules get water soluble by this process. Drug molecules contain different heteroatoms, and as a result solubility is generally poor. The drug solubility can further be increased using microemulsion suspension technique. Researchers have been moving toward nanotechnology, in which a particle size range of 10–100nm is called a nanocrystal. This improves drug solubility to a greater extent. Nanocrystal drug molecules can be taken orally and are injectable wherein 100% bioavailability can be achieved. Different techniques can be used to synthesize these nanocrystals, by which production of larger extent can be done for commercial usages.