Nanocrystal Technology: Conceptualization to Commercialization

The increasing number of poorly soluble drugs requires innovative formulation approaches to reach a sufficiently high bioavailability after oral administration or at least to make available intravenously injectable forms. There are a number of classical formulation approaches which are of limited success as clearly demonstrated by the relatively low number of products on the market being based on such technologies. The reduction of drug particle to the nano-scale increases dissolution velocity and saturation solubility, and this change of materials into the nanodimension dramatically change its physical properties thereby leading to improved in vivo drug performance. Among various nanotechnological approaches, Nanocrystals have been emerged as one of the potential technology to overcome this issue. This chapter outlines basic pharmaceutical approaches to overcome poor solubility problem of drug candidates; with special overview on NanoCrystal Technology and issues related to its commercialization; considering their properties, merits production technologies available currently, applications in drug delivery alongwith nanocrystal products available commercially or under pipeline.