(640a) A Cost-Effective High-Throughput Robotic System for Slurry Separation and Polymorph Characterization

In pharmaceutical process development of drug substances and intermediates, separation of solid sample from slurry is frequently practiced in order to obtain wetcake samples and to identify hits for further form characterization. Typically, such screening work is performed in tens of solvent system, making manual sample preparation lengthy and tedious. Therefore, a robotic system capable of solid-liquid separation can greatly reduce resources required for form screening. However, commercial high throughput solution for polymorph screening has been not available.

In this presentation, we report a cost-effective high-throughput screening robotic platform for polymorph screening, assembled from a commercially available high throughput machine and in-house designed and 3D printed parts. The platform enables automated slurry separation and XRPD sample preparation to reduce manual workload, lower the concerns of potent compound handling, and accelerate screening process. Two examples of this application were successfully completed to demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of this new platform. The applicable scope of the platform was also assessed by testing polymorphisms of a model compound A with prismatic morphology and a compound B with acicular morphology in different solvents at different solid concentrations via the system, suggesting extensive applicability of the platform for polymorph screening.