Ellen Phiddian
Cosmos science journalist
Researchers have found a simple, environmentally friendly way to make a more effective form of ibuprofen.
The technique, which uses a ball mill, could help manufacturers to lower their energy and material use when making painkillers.
They’ve published their study in RSC Mechanochemistry.
Ibuprofen is listed by the World Health Organization as an essential medicine. But the drug is sensitive to heat and difficult to dissolve in water, both of which make it resource-intensive to make and less effective than it might be.
This study used a drum mill – a rotating drum containing ball bearings – to grind ibuprofen with a compound called nicotinamide. This produced “co-crystals” which could be more effective painkillers than plain ibuprofen.
The mills have been used in mining and construction industries for years, but chemists have more recently become interested in them because of their ability to trigger reactions with mechanical energy.
The reactions don’t need as much heat, or solvents to dissolve the reagents that traditional chemical manufacturing requires, making the process more environmentally friendly.
The researchers were able to make 3kg of ibuprofen-nicotinamide co-crystals to pharmaceutical-level purity, after 90 minutes of rotating.
“This outcome is particularly impressive when compared to traditional solution-based methods, which often require large volumes of solvents, as well as energy- and time-intensive processes,” says first author Jan-Hendrik Schöbel, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung, Germany.
