NMR Spectroscopy in Drug Development and Analysis

Since the development of the NMR spectrometer in the 1950s, NMR spectra have been widely used for the elucidation of the 2D structure of synthesized and natural compounds. In the 1980s, the high-resolution NMR spectrometer (> 300 Mhz) and 2D experiments were introduced, which opened up the possibility to determine the 3D structure of large molecules, especially biomolecules. However, NMR spectroscopy has rarely been applied to drug analysis. This volume illustrates the power and versatility of NMR spectroscopy in the determination of impurities in and the content of drugs, the composition of polymer excipients, the characterization of isomeric drug mixtures, the complexation of drugs with small-size components or ions, and the behaviour of drugs in acid and basic solution. In addition, NMR spectroscopy and especially the hyphenated technique with HPLC is shown to be a powerful tool to measure a drug and its metabolites in various body fluids. The solid state NMR technique can give information on the structure, especially the conformation of drugs and excipients in drug formulations. SAR by NMR, introduced by Fesik, impressively demonstrated the potential of NMR spectroscopy in drug development and in the characterisation of the interaction between large molecules and ligands. The complexation between proteins, lipids and cyclodextrins with drugs is described. NMR imaging (MRI and MRS) can be used to characterise the liberation of drugs from a drug formulation. Furthermore, the distribution of substances in plants, in animals, in tissues and in humans can be visualized by imaging.