Calculation of the lattice energy of organic crystals is needed for predicting important structural and physicochemical properties such as polymorphism and growth morphology. Quantum mechanical methods that can be used for calculating typical organic crystals are unable to fully estimate van der Waals energies in a crystal. A method by augmenting the density functional theory with an analytical, nonelectronic approach for accounting for the dispersion energy was tested for selected organic crystals. The results illustrate the feasibility of this method for the prediction of the lattice energy of organic crystals. It is also shown that the dispersion energy is a dominant component of the lattice energy, particularly for those organic crystals that have no hydrogen bonds.

Due to the empirical nature for estimating the dispersion energy, choosing the right empirical parameters is crucial. The methods and parameters tested seem to be able to produce reliable values of lattice energies of the drug crystals.

The purpose of this work was to study the effect of pH on the liposomal encapsulation of a model camptothecin anti-tumor agent, DB-67, by considering the state of ionization and bilayer membrane/ water partitioning of the drug as a function of pH. A novel fluorescence method was developed to monitor intravesicular pH in liposomal formulations containing entrapped DB-67 by using the drug itself as a pH indicator. Fluorescence spectra were recorded in aqueous buffers and liposomes and used to estimate the ionization constant of the A-ring phenol of DB-67 (pKa 2 ) and shifts in ionization constants (pKa 1 and pKa 2 ) due to membrane binding. Bilayer/water partitioning studies by equilibrium dialysis were employed to show that DB-67 is highly membrane bound over the entire pH range examined though binding decreases with an increase in pH. The observed ionization constants of membrane-bound DB-67 obtained from the equilibrium dialysis experiments were consistent with observations from fluorescence measurements and previous permeability results. The pH dependence of DB-67 loading using a passive loading technique was found to reflect the pH dependence of membrane binding of the drug. This results in poor encapsulation efficiency of DB-67 at high pH, necessitating further development of formulation strategies to improve loading efficiency.

Wettability is one of the anisotropic surface properties of molecular crystals that exhibit the structural variance of chemical moieties on various growth faces. The divergence in liquid-solid interactions at different faces is thought to be related to the inherent responding capacity or sensitivity of a solid surface to the perturbation in electronic structures and atomic positions as a result of the contact by a liquid. Since the Fukui function, according to density functional theory (DFT), is a local function for describing such sensitivity to the structural perturbation and is directly related to local softness, it has been proposed and tested to use an integrated Fukui function over a crystallographic plane for describing the anisotropy of solid-liquid interactions. It is found that the contact angle of a polar solvent, such as water, on a crystal surface shows an intimate connection to the integrated Fukui functions of the surface, illustrating an extension of Pearson's HSAB (hard and soft acids and bases) to crystal systems. The concept of face-integrated Fukui function and the approach to apply the HSAB with the DFT-based concepts may provide a powerful means for describing anisotropic properties, including wettability of organic crystals.

Electronic calculations were able to provide insightful glimpses into the effect of crystal packing on the solid-state reaction of indomethacin. The nuclear Fukui function, which characterizes the physical stress on an atom due to perturbation in electron density, may provide a powerful means of studying the solid-state reactions of organic crystals at the electronic level.