Coarse-grained modeling of crystal growth and polymorphism of a model pharmaceutical molecule.

Autor: Mandal T; Department of Chemical Engineering and Biointerfaces Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI-48109, USA. rlarson@umich.edu., Marson RL; Department of Chemical Engineering and Biointerfaces Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI-48109, USA. rlarson@umich.edu., Larson RG; Department of Chemical Engineering and Biointerfaces Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI-48109, USA. rlarson@umich.edu.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Soft matter [Soft Matter] 2016 Oct 04; Vol. 12 (39), pp. 8246-8255.
DOI: 10.1039/c6sm01817c
Abstrakt: We describe a systematic coarse-graining method to study crystallization and predict possible polymorphs of small organic molecules. In this method, a coarse-grained (CG) force field is obtained by inverse-Boltzmann iteration from the radial distribution function of atomistic simulations of the known crystal. With the force field obtained by this method, we show that CG simulations of the drug phenytoin predict growth of a crystalline slab from a melt of phenytoin, allowing determination of the fastest-growing surface, as well as giving the correct lattice parameters and crystal morphology. By applying meta-dynamics to the coarse-grained model, a new crystalline form of phenytoin (monoclinic, space group P2 1 ) was predicted which is different from the experimentally known crystal structure (orthorhombic, space group Pna2 1 ). Atomistic simulations and quantum calculations then showed the polymorph to be meta-stable at ambient temperature and pressure, and thermodynamically more stable than the conventional orthorhombic crystal at high pressure. The results suggest an efficient route to study crystal growth of small organic molecules that could also be useful for identification of possible polymorphs as well.
Databáze: MEDLINE