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Current Pharmaceutical Design

Editor-in-Chief

ISSN (Print): 1381-6128
ISSN (Online): 1873-4286

Application of Precipitation Methods for the Production of Water-insoluble Drug Nanocrystals: Production Techniques and Stability of Nanocrystals

Author(s): Dengning Xia, Yong Gan and Fude Cui

Volume 20, Issue 3, 2014

Page: [408 - 435] Pages: 28

DOI: 10.2174/13816128113199990397

Price: $65

Abstract

This review focuses on using precipitation (bottom-up) method to produce water-insoluble drug nanocrystals, and the stability issues of nanocrystals. The precipitation techniques for production of ultra-fine particles have been widely researched for last few decades. In these techniques, precipitation of solute is achieved by addition of a non-solvent for solute called anti-solvent to decrease the solvent power for the solute dissolved in a solution. The anti-solvent can be water, organic solvents or supercritical fluids. In this paper, efforts have been made to review the precipitation techniques involving the anti-solvent precipitation by simple mixing, impinging jet mixing, multi-inlet vortex mixing, the using of high-gravity, ultrasonic waves and supercritical fluids. The key to the success of yielding stable nanocrystals in these techniques is to control the nucleation kinetics and particle growth through mixing during precipitation based on crystallization theories. The stability issues of the nanocrystals, such as sedimentation, Ostwald ripening, agglomeration and cementing of crystals, change of crystalline state, and the approaches to stabilizing nanocrystals are also discussed in detail.

Keywords: Water insoluble drug, nanocrystals, anti-solvent, precipitation, stability, crystal grow and nucleation, stabilizer, flash precipitation, supercritical anti-solvent.


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