COSMOPharm: Drug–Polymer Compatibility of Pharmaceutical Amorphous Solid Dispersions from COSMO-SAC

Abstract

The quantum mechanics-aided COSMO-SAC activity coefficient model is applied and systematically examined for predicting the thermodynamic compatibility of drugs and polymers. The drug−polymer compatibility is a key aspect in the rational selection of optimal polymeric carriers for pharmaceutical amorphous solid dispersions (ASD) that enhance drug bioavailability. The drug−polymer compatibility is evaluated in terms of both solubility and miscibility, calculated using standard thermodynamic equilibrium relations based on the activity coefficients predicted by COSMO-SAC. As inherent to COSMO-SAC, our approach relies only on quantum-mechanically derived σ-profiles of the considered molecular species and involves no parameter fitting to experimental data. All σ-profiles used were determined in this work, with those of the polymers being derived from their shorter oligomers by replicating the properties of their central monomer unit(s). Quantitatively, COSMO-SAC achieved an overall average absolute deviation of 13% in weight fraction drug solubility predictions compared to experimental data. Qualitatively, COSMO-SAC correctly categorized different polymer types in terms of their compatibility with drugs and provided meaningful estimations of the amorphous−amorphous phase separation. Furthermore, we analyzed the sensitivity of the COSMO-SAC results for ASD to different model configurations and σ-profiles of polymers. In general, while the free volume and dispersion terms exerted a limited effect on predictions, the structures of oligomers used to produce σ-profiles of polymers appeared to be more important, especially in the case of strongly interacting polymers. Explanations for these observations are provided. COSMO-SAC proved to be an efficient method for compatibility prediction and polymer screening in ASD, particularly in terms of its performance−cost ratio, as it relies only on first-principles calculations for the considered molecular species. The open-source nature of both COSMO-SAC and the Python-based tool COSMOPharm, developed in this work for predicting the API−polymer thermodynamic compatibility, invites interested readers to explore and utilize this method for further research or assistance in the design of pharmaceutical formulations.