An Appreciation of Organic Solid‐State Chemistry and Challenges in the Field of “Molecules, Materials, Medicines”

Abstract

Dedicated to Professor Jack Dunitz in recognition of his contributions to organic solid-state chemistryi ni ts widest sense analytical skills (including sophisticated developments in instrumentation), alongwith major developments in computational techniques,t here are still many challenges.T his paper,w ith ap rimary focus on pharmaceuticals, provides ab rief, and not comprehensive, personalo verview of the progresst hat has been madea nd has yet to be made. Amongst the chemists and crystallographers who have contributed significantly to the subject is Jack Dunitz and some of his seminal papers appear in several of the issues discussed.

Luminescent Polymorphic Co-crystals: A Promising Way to the Diversity of Molecular Assembly, Fluorescence Polarization, and Optical Waveguide

“…It is expected that if the advantages of two major crystal engineering strategies (i.e., molecular polymorphisms and co-crystals) were combined, the design route for the novel photofunctional materials would be largely expended due to the conversion of molecular stacking patterns, self-assembly modes, and photonic properties. Screening for polymorphic co-crystals has been studied and made some progress in the pharmaceutical material field. − However, to the best of our knowledge, there are only very few reported examples of polymorphs in photofunctional co-crystals, probably due to the difficulties and complications in manipulating the molecular recognition, self-assembly, and co-crystallization processes for multiple components in the same chemical system. − Therefore, it is still a challenging goal to design and fabricate the polymorphic co-crystals for the sake of establishing a structure–activity relationship and developing new photofunctional and/or photonic applications.…”

Engineering Molecular Crystals: Backbreaking, yet Gratifying

“…But I firmly believe that we are already on our way to tackling many of these challenges, and I look forward to seeing the positive impacts of such discipline-wide changes in the near future. I hope that our endeavors to better control and understand the solid state will not only benefit the field of pharmaceutical formulations, , but will also stimulate solutions to many outstanding chemical problems, such as materials for the storage and distribution of clean energy, and uncovering the processes that enabled the origins of life …”

Molecular Salts of l-Carnosine: Combining a Natural Antioxidant and Geroprotector with “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS) Organic Acids

“…Nowadays design, formulation, and characterization of multiple crystal forms, for example, polymorphs, solvates, cocrystals, and molecular salts, are of great interest for solid-state chemists, especially in the pharmaceutical field, where active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) properties can be modified and improved by careful selection of crystal coformers or (de)­protonable systems . In this work, we report on the reactivity of zwitterionic l -carnosine with carboxylic acids of the GRAS type (GRAS = generally regarded as safe) accepted by the pharmacopeia, resulting in the molecular salts listed in Table .…”