Lamivudine Salts with Improved Solubilities

To optimize solubility of drugs, current strategies mainly focus on engineering and screening of smart crystal phases. Two salts of the anti-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) drug lamivudine—namely, lamivudine hydrochloride and lamivudine hydrochloride monohydrate, were prepared in the course of screening the crystallization conditions of lamivudine duplex, an uncommon DNA-mimic, double-stranded helical structure made up of partially protonated drug pairs. Here, water solubilities of lamivudine hydrochloride, lamivudine hydrochloride monohydrate, and lamivudine duplex are reported. The aqueous solubility of this anti-HIV drug was significantly increased in both salts and also in lamivudine duplex in relation to the water solubility of lamivudine form II. In comparison with the lamivudine form II incorporated into therapeutic formulations, the drug solubility was increased at a temperature of 299 ± 2K by factors of 1.2, 3.3, and 4.5 in lamivudine hydrochloride, lamivudine hydrochloride monohydrate, and lamivudine duplex, respectively, demonstrating that this solid-state property of lamivudine can be improved by crystal engineering strategies. Solubility profiles were understood on the basis of structural and solvent–solute interaction approaches. At last, correlations between solubility and crystal structures allowed for a rational approach to understand how this physicochemical feature could be enhanced by engineering new salts of the drug. © 2012Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the American Pharmacists Association J Pharm Sci 101:2143–2154, 2012