Crystal structures of drugs: Advances in determination, prediction and engineering

Most marketed pharmaceuticals consist of molecular crystals. The arrangement of the molecules in a crystal determines its physical properties and, in certain cases, its chemical properties, and so greatly influences the processing and formulation of solid pharmaceuticals, as well as key drug properties such as dissolution rate and stability. A thorough understanding of the relationships between physical structures and the properties of pharmaceutical solids is therefore important in selecting the most suitable form of an active pharmaceutical ingredient for development into a drug product. In this article, we review the different crystal forms of pharmaceuticals, the challenges that they present and recent advances in crystal structure determination. We then discuss computational approaches for predicting crystal properties. Finally, we review the analysis of crystal structures in furthering crystal engineering to design novel pharmaceutical compounds with desired physical and mechanical properties.