Automation of Solid form Screening Procedures in the Pharmaceutical Industry—How to Avoid the Bottlenecks

AbstractSolid form selection is one of the key milestones in the development of any new small molecule drug candidate. It is critical not only from a regulatory perspective but also from a drug substance manufacturing and drug product-processing viewpoint. High throughput systems provide a significant increase in the number and diversity of experiments performed on a given compound, and are becoming a central feature of drug development, especially in areas concerned with solid form selection. This paper reports our automation of the polymorph screening procedure in combination with automated isolation of samples. Particular focus is placed on the analysis by high throughput PXRD with associated strategies for analysis, clustering, pattern classification, and visualizationKeywords: PolymorphismAutomated crystallizationHigh throughput powder diffractionAutomated pattern comparison and classification