Dissolution Advantage of Nitazoxanide Cocrystals in the Presence of Cellulosic Polymers

Salas-Zúñiga, Reynaldo; Rodríguez-Ruiz, Christian; Höpfl, Herbert; Morales-Rojas, Hugo; Sánchez-Guadarrama, Obdulia; Rodríguez-Cuamatzi, Patricia; Herrera-Ruiz, Dea

A cocrystal constitutes a solid single-phase crystalline material composed of two or more molecular and/or ionic compounds in a stoichiometric ratio, which is neither a solvate nor a simple salt. If at least one of the components is an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and if the coformer is pharmaceutically acceptable, then the substance is recognized as pharmaceutical cocrystal. A pharmaceutical cocrystal can offer multiple benefits for physicochemical and biopharmaceutical properties of APIs, such as increased solubility and dissolution rates, improvement of mechanical properties, and stability [13] [14] [15] . Particularly, cocrystals have exhibited higher, similar or lower solubility compared to the parent API, depending on the nature of the coformer and the solution conditions [16, 17] . Solubility advantages of cocrystals over parent drugs can be higher by orders of magnitude, however, this also represents a risk due to precipitation to the less soluble form of the drug at supersaturated concentrations reached during the dissolution process [18, 19] .