SOLUBILITY OF A NEW ANTIRETROVIRAL DRUG (CRS 74) IN AQUEOUS ETHANOL MIXTURES

This study concerns a new antiretroviral drug named CRS 74, which has a limited bioavailability because of its low aqueous solubility and dissolution rate. To improve these properties, CRS 74 can be recrystallized by using Liquid Anti-Solvent (LAS) crystallization. Ethanol is chosen as the solvent under study for the molecule and water as the anti-solvent. Since solubility data is limited, it is necessary to collect experimental data for the molecule in relation to ethanol and water-ethanol mixtures at different temperatures in order to select suitable mixture compositions and temperature for LAS process design. In this work, the CRS 74 solubility measured in the temperature range 288.15-303.15 K in pure ethanol and in 95% water 5% w/w ethanol mixtures, and the CRS 74 solubility measured at 303.15 K in water-ethanol mixtures containing from 30 to 70% w/w ethanol are presented. Measurements were performed using the shake-flask method for generating the saturated solutions followed by compositional analysis by HPLC of the solution. The experimental data showed that the solubility of CRS 74 in binary hydroalcoholic mixtures increases upon increasing the temperature and mass fraction of ethanol. In order to better understand the behavior of the system and to estimate supersaturation conditions for a larger range of CRS 74 crystallization conditions, two models have been chosen to describe the experimental data: UNIQUAC and Jouyban-Acree models. The modeling of experimental solid-liquid equilibrium data proved that both models could correlate satisfactorily the solubility of the studied drug. This study provided valuable data for the recrystallization of CRS 74 by using the Liquid Anti-Solvent (LAS) crystallization process.