Microbatch under-oil salt screening of organic cations: single-crystal growth of active pharmaceutical ingredients

Multicomponent solid forms of active pharmaceutical ingredients represent a modern method of tuning their physicochemical properties. Typically, salts are the most commonly used multicomponent solid form in the pharmaceutical industry. More than 38% are formulated as organic cations. Salt screening is an essential but demanding step when identifying the most appropriate formulation. The microbatch under-oil crystallization technique of proteins has been combined with the previously developed high-throughput vapour-diffusion screening for use as a novel method of primary salt screening of organic cations. The procedure allows the set up of about 100 crystallization experiments per 30 min. This requires between 17 and 564 mg of screened cationic active pharmaceutical ingredients, which were of moderate to very high water solublity. Five distinct organic salts, three of them diverse active pharmaceutical compounds or the other enantiomer thereof, in the form of chloride salts were tested. The screening was extremely successful; at least two new single-crystal structures could be obtained for each particular compound and many more salts as single crystals were formed compared with our previous vapour-diffusion method

A high throughput screening method for the nano-crystallization of salts of organic cations

The generation of solid salts of organic molecules is important to the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. Commonly used salt screening methods consume a lot of resources. We employed a combination of ion exchange screening and vapour diffusion for crystallization. This technique is semi-automatic and requires just nanoliters of the solution of the analyte to be crystallized. This high throughput screening yielded single crystals of sufficient size and quality for single-crystal X-ray structure determination using an in-house X-ray diffractometer. The broad scope of our method has been shown by challenging it with 7 very different organic cations, whose aqueous solubilities vary by a factor of almost 1000. At least one crystal structure for 6 out of 7 tested cations was determined; 4 out of the successful 6 ones had never been crystallized before. Our method is extremely attractive for high throughput salt screening, especially for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), as about 40% of all APIs are cationic salts. Additionally, our screening is a new and very promising procedure for the crystallization of salts of organic cations

Growing single crystals of small molecules by thermal recrystallization, a viable option even for minute amounts of material?

The growth of single crystals of small molecules by thermal recrystallization of only a few milligrams of material has been studied for carbamazepine, para-aminobenzoic acid and vitamin B12. High quality single crystals could be grown for carbamazepine and para-aminobenzoic acid within just six hours. Various solvents and concentrations were tested for their influence upon the growth of crystals

Single crystal growth of water-soluble metal complexes with the help of the nano-crystallization method

The Nano-Crystallization method has been extensively tested for the growth of single crystals of cationic coordination compounds, which are soluble in water. All three studied, diverse metal complexes could be crystallized with the help of pipetting robots commonly used for the crystallization of proteins and the anion small molecule screen. It was furthermore possible to obtain for each positively charged complex several structures with different anions. In one case, together with literature data, a total of six salts with different anions could be assembled, which allowed an investigation of the influence of the counterions on the inter-cation metal-to-metal distance. The Nano-Crystallization method can be recommended for the single crystal growth of cationic coordination complexes, which are stable in water and have an aqueous solubility of at least 2 mM. This is the first publication dedicated solely to the single crystal growth of coordination complexes

Microbatch under-oil salt screening of organic cations: single-crystal growth of active pharmaceutical ingredients

Multicomponent solid forms of active pharmaceutical ingredients represent a modern method of tuning their physicochemical properties. Typically, salts are the most commonly used multicomponent solid form in the pharmaceutical industry. More than 38% are formulated as organic cations. Salt screening is an essential but demanding step when identifying the most appropriate formulation. The microbatch under-oil crystallization technique of proteins has been combined with the previously developed high-throughput vapour-diffusion screening for use as a novel method of primary salt screening of organic cations. The procedure allows the set up of about 100 crystallization experiments per 30 min. This requires between 17 and 564 mg of screened cationic active pharmaceutical ingredients, which were of moderate to very high water solublity. Five distinct organic salts, three of them diverse active pharmaceutical compounds or the other enantiomer thereof, in the form of chloride salts were tested. The screening was extremely successful; at least two new single-crystal structures could be obtained for each particular compound and many more salts as single crystals were formed compared with our previous vapour-diffusion method

The GenTree Platform:growth traits and tree-level environmental data in 12 European forest tree species

Abstract Background: Progress in the field of evolutionary forest ecology has been hampered by the huge challenge of phenotyping trees across their ranges in their natural environments, and the limitation in high-resolution environmental information. Findings: The GenTree Platform contains phenotypic and environmental data from 4,959 trees from 12 ecologically and economically important European forest tree species: Abies alba Mill. (silver fir), Betula pendula Roth. (silver birch), Fagus sylvatica L. (European beech), Picea abies (L.) H. Karst (Norway spruce), Pinus cembra L. (Swiss stone pine), Pinus halepensis Mill. (Aleppo pine), Pinus nigra Arnold (European black pine), Pinus pinaster Aiton (maritime pine), Pinus sylvestris L. (Scots pine), Populus nigra L. (European black poplar), Taxus baccata L. (English yew), and Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. (sessile oak). Phenotypic (height, diameter at breast height, crown size, bark thickness, biomass, straightness, forking, branch angle, fructification), regeneration, environmental in situ measurements (soil depth, vegetation cover, competition indices), and environmental modeling data extracted by using bilinear interpolation accounting for surrounding conditions of each tree (precipitation, temperature, insolation, drought indices) were obtained from trees in 194 sites covering the species’ geographic ranges and reflecting local environmental gradients. Conclusions: The GenTree Platform is a new resource for investigating ecological and evolutionary processes in forest trees. The coherent phenotyping and environmental characterization across 12 species in their European ranges allow for a wide range of analyses from forest ecologists, conservationists, and macro-ecologists. Also, the data here presented can be linked to the GenTree Dendroecological collection, the GenTree Leaf Trait collection, and the GenTree Genomic collection presented elsewhere, which together build the largest evolutionary forest ecology data collection available

Association of polygenic score and the involvement of cholinergic and glutamatergic pathways with lithium treatment response in patients with bipolar disorder

Lithium is regarded as the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), a severe and disabling mental health disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide. Nevertheless, lithium is not consistently effective, with only 30% of patients showing a favorable response to treatment. To provide personalized treatment options for bipolar patients, it is essential to identify prediction biomarkers such as polygenic scores. In this study, we developed a polygenic score for lithium treatment response (Li-PGS(+)) in patients with BD. To gain further insights into lithium's possible molecular mechanism of action, we performed a genome-wide gene-based analysis. Using polygenic score modeling, via methods incorporating Bayesian regression and continuous shrinkage priors, Li-PGS(+) was developed in the International Consortium of Lithium Genetics cohort (ConLi(+)Gen: N = 2367) and replicated in the combined PsyCourse (N = 89) and BipoLife (N = 102) studies. The associations of Li-PGS(+) and lithium treatment response - defined in a continuous ALDA scale and a categorical outcome (good response vs. poor response) were tested using regression models, each adjusted for the covariates: age, sex, and the first four genetic principal components. Statistical significance was determined at P < 0.05. Li-PGS(+) was positively associated with lithium treatment response in the ConLi(+)Gen cohort, in both the categorical (P = 9.8 x 10(-)(12), R-2 = 1.9%) and continuous (P = 6.4 x 10(-)(9), R-2 = 2.6%) outcomes. Compared to bipolar patients in the 1(st) decile of the risk distribution, individuals in the 10(th) decile had 3.47-fold (95%CI: 2.22-5.47) higher odds of responding favorably to lithium. The results were replicated in the independent cohorts for the categorical treatment outcome (P = 3.9 x 10(-)(4), R-2 = 0.9%), but not for the continuous outcome (P = 0.13). Gene-based analyses revealed 36 candidate genes that are enriched in biological pathways controlled by glutamate and acetylcholine. Li-PGS(+) may be useful in the development of pharmacogenomic testing strategies by enabling a classification of bipolar patients according to their response to treatment

Association of polygenic score and the involvement of cholinergic and glutamatergic pathways with lithium treatment response in patients with bipolar disorder

International audienceLithium is regarded as the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), a severe and disabling mental health disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide. Nevertheless, lithium is not consistently effective, with only 30% of patients showing a favorable response to treatment. To provide personalized treatment options for bipolar patients, it is essential to identify prediction biomarkers such as polygenic scores. In this study, we developed a polygenic score for lithium treatment response (Li + PGS) in patients with BD. To gain further insights into lithium's possible molecular mechanism of action, we performed a genome-wide gene-based analysis. Using polygenic score modeling, via methods incorporating Bayesian regression and continuous shrinkage priors, Li + PGS was developed in the International Consortium of Lithium Genetics cohort (ConLi + Gen: N = 2367) and replicated in the combined PsyCourse (N = 89) and BipoLife (N = 102) studies. The associations of Li + PGS and lithium treatment responsedefined in a continuous ALDA scale and a categorical outcome (good response vs. poor response) were tested using regression models, each adjusted for the covariates: age, sex, and the first four genetic principal components. Statistical significance was determined at P < 0.05. Li + PGS was positively associated with lithium treatment response in the ConLi + Gen cohort, in both the categorical (P = 9.8 × 10 −12 , R 2 = 1.9%) and continuous (P = 6.4 × 10 −9 , R 2 = 2.6%) outcomes. Compared to bipolar patients in the 1 st decile of the risk distribution, individuals in the 10 th decile had 3.47-fold (95%CI: 2.22-5.47) higher odds of responding favorably to lithium. The results were replicated in the independent cohorts for the categorical treatment outcome (P = 3.9 × 10 −4 , R 2 = 0.9%), but not for the continuous outcome (P = 0.13). Gene-based analyses revealed 36 candidate genes that are enriched in biological pathways controlled by glutamate and acetylcholine. Li + PGS may be useful in the development of pharmacogenomic testing strategies by enabling a classification of bipolar patients according to their response to treatment