Melt crystallization and thermal degradation profile of the antichagasic drug nifurtimox.
J Pharm Biomed Anal
; 239: 115878, 2024 Feb 15.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38039869
ABSTRACT
Despite nifurtimox (NFX) being a traditional drug for treating Chagas disease, some of its physicochemical properties are still unknown, especially its thermal behavior, which brings important outcomes regarding stability and compatibility. In this work, a comprehensive study of NFX's thermal properties was conducted to assist incremental innovations that can improve the efficacy of this drug in novel pharmaceutical products. For this purpose, thermal analyses associated with spectroscopy and spectrometry techniques were used. DSC analyses revealed that the melt crystallization of the NFX led to its amorphous form with the possible formation of a minor fraction of a different crystalline phase. Coats-Redfern method using TGA results indicated the activation energy of NFX non-isothermal degradation as 348.8 ± 8.2 kJ mol-1, which coincides with the C-NO2 bond dissociation energy of the 2-nitrofuran. Investigation of the isothermal degradation kinetics using FTIR 2D COS showed the possible detachment of radical NO2 and ethylene from the NFX structure, which could affect its mechanism of action. A preliminary mechanism for the thermal degradation of this drug was also proposed. The results enhanced the understanding of NFX's thermal properties, providing valuable insights, especially for developing NFX-based pharmaceutical products that involve thermal processing.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Nifurtimox
/
Nitrofurans
Language:
En
Journal:
J Pharm Biomed Anal
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article