The Importance of X-ray Crystal Structure Determinations for Pharmacy

Abstract

X-ray structure analysis results have been widely used in the pharmaceutical research, development and control, especially for mapping polymorphism, to determine the chirality of active substances, in the pharmaceutical documentation and patent policy for many years. The greatest progress in X-ray diffraction techniques has been made in improving the quality of the poor material for successful data collection (magnetically oriented microcrystal arrays, serial snapshot crystallography). Prospects of the pharmaceutical application of X-ray crystallography lie in the acceleration of data collection, time-resolved structural studies obtained from the material of pharmaceutical batches without modification, and, in addition to that, in solving structures of semi-solid and amorphous phases and monitoring structural changes in drug formulations.