Many organic compounds, including the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), exist in various forms in the solid-state known as polymorphs.  In order to properly characterize the medicinal properties, the manufacturing ability, and the shelf-life, the crystal structure of the AIP should be determined.  Approximately 20% of all organic compounds fail to form suitable crystals for traditional diffraction studies and alternative approaches to differentiating polymorphs are necessary.  Solid-state NMR is capable of providing site specific resolution on microcrystalline powder samples. High-resolution solid state NMR utilizes the cross-polarization pulse sequence while spinning the sample at the �magic-angle� and high-powder proton decoupling.  This laboratory experiment, suitable for analytical, physical or biochemistry courses, demonstrates the techniques used to achieve high-resolution solid-state NMR on various polymorphs of the histamine H2-receptor antagonist cimetidine.   Cimetidine, the active ingredient in Tagamet, was the first drug created by rational drug design methodology.  Implementing the solid-state NMR experiment in undergraduate curriculums will be discussed.

High resolution solid-state NMR: Characterization of polymorphism in cimetidine a pharmaceutical compound

247th National Meeting (2014)

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