To
continue the realization of new therapeutics, a more diverse
range of solid forms is being considered. Synthetic modalities are
broadening beyond simple organic molecules to more complicated structures,
including organic salts, cocrystals, and solvates. As in all crystalline
applications, engineering the morphology of such systems remains an
important consideration, but traditional in silico approaches require
further development to become capable of accurately describing these
systems. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition to enact mechanistic
crystal growth models is to calculate and organize solid-state interactions
between growth units. The typical software framework for acquiring
this information is to apply crystallographic symmetry operations
to generate a unit cell from the asymmetric unit. While this approach
is feasible for systems where the asymmetric unit corresponds to the
growth unit itself, many systems do not satisfy this criterion, particularly
the emerging therapeutic solid forms. By redesigning the input preparation
software framework, we can build a description of the solid-state
interactions that is independent of the asymmetric unit and applicable
to any crystallographic complexity. We demonstrate the application
of this method to three organic molecular crystals with crystallography
of varying degrees of complexicty. The studied systems are naphthalene
(Z′ = 0.5), benzoic acid (Z′ = 1), and tazofelone (Z′ = 2), respectively
(where Z′ is the number of molecules in the
asymmetric unit). This new software framework lays the groundwork
for rapid in silico habit predictions of organic salts, cocrystals,
and solvates.
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