The
engineering of pharmaceutical cocrystals has been effectively
utilized to improve the physicochemical properties such as stability
and solubility, and thus it could optimize the solid formations of
active pharmaceutical ingredients. This work focuses on the sulfamethazine–p-aminobenzoic acid (STH–PABA) cocrystal
regulated by molecular synthons constructed from mutual N···H···O
interactions. The STH–PABA cocrystal was produced
by means of the slow evaporation crystallization method, and the cocrystal
structure was determined through X-ray crystallography. Meanwhile,
X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetric
analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman, and NMR
were applied to analyze the features of the STH–PABA cocrystal. Special attention was paid to in vitro antibacterial
activity and microscopic investigations. Our findings indicated that
the formation of cocrystals could enhance the solubility and slightly
improve the release behavior of STH, and increase the
leaking of bacterial cell inclusion that leads to enhanced antibacterial
activity.