Quantifying Molecular Mixing and Heterogeneity in Pharmaceutical Dispersions at Sub-100 nm Resolution by Spin...

Molecular miscibility and homogeneity of amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs) are critical attributes that impact physicochemical stability, bioavailability, and processability. Observation of a single glass transition is utilized as a criterion for good mixing of drug substance and polymeric components but can be misleading and cannot quantitatively analyze the domain size at high resolution. While imaging techniques, on the other hand, can characterize phase separation on the particle surface at the nanometer scale, they often require customized sample preparation and handling. Moreover, a mixed system is not necessarily homogeneous. Compared to the numerous studies that have evaluated the mixing of drug substance and polymer in ASDs, inhomogeneity in the phase compositions has remained significantly underexplored. To overcome the analytical challenge, we have developed a ¹H spin diffusion NMR technique to quantify molecular mixing of bulk ASDs at sub-100 nm resolution. It combines relaxation filtering (T_2H and T_1ρ) that leaves the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) as the main source of ¹H magnetization at the start of spin diffusion to the polymer matrix. A spray-dried nifedipine-poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (Nif-PVP) ASD at a 5 wt % drug loading was a homogeneous reference system that exhibited equilibration of magnetization transfer from API to polymer within a short spin diffusion time of ∼3 ms. While fast initial magnetization transfer proving mixing on the 1 nm scale was also observed in Nif-PVP ASDs prepared by hot-melt extrusion (HME) at 186 °C at a 40 wt % drug loading, incomplete equilibration of peak intensities documented inhomogeneity on the ≥30 nm scale. The nonuniformity was confirmed by the partial inversion of the Nif magnetization in the filter that resulted in an even more pronounced deviation from equilibration and by ¹H-¹³C heteronuclear correlation (HETCOR) NMR. It is consistent with the observed differential ¹H spin-lattice relaxation of Nif and PVP as well as a domain structure on the 20 nm scale observed in atomic force microscopy (AFM) images. The incomplete equilibration and differential relaxation were consistently reproduced in a model of two mixed phases of different compositions, e.g., 40 wt % of the ASD with a 15 wt % drug loading and the remaining 60 wt % with a 56 wt % drug loading. Hot-melt extrusion produced more inhomogeneous samples than spray drying for the samples examined in our study. To the best of our knowledge, this spin diffusion NMR method provides currently the highest-resolution quantification of inhomogeneous molecular mixing and phase composition in bulk samples of pharmaceutical dispersions produced with equipment, procedures, and drug loadings that are relevant to industrial drug development.