High-pressure studies in the supercooled and glassy state of the strongly associated active pharmaceutical ingredient—ticagrelor

In this paper, the molecular dynamics at different thermodynamic conditions of hydrogen-bonded (H-bonded) active pharmaceutical ingredient—ticagrelor (TICA) have been investigated. Extensive high-pressure (HP) dielectric studies revealed surprising high sensitivity of the structural (α)-relaxation to compression. They also showed that unexpectedly the shape of the α-peak remains invariable at various temperature (T) and pressure (p) conditions at constant α-relaxation time. Further infrared measurements on the ordinary and pressure densified glasses of the examined compound indicated that the hydrogen-bonding pattern in TICA is unchanged by the applied experimental conditions. Such behavior was in contrast to that observed recently for ritonavir (where the organization of hydrogen bonds varied at high p) and explained the lack of changes in the width of α-dispersion with compression. Moreover, HP dielectric measurements performed in the glassy state of TICA revealed the high sensitivity of the slow secondary (β)-relaxation (Johari–Goldstein type) to pressure and fulfillment of the isochronal superpositioning of α- and JG-β-relaxation times. Additionally, it was found that the activation entropy for the β-process, estimated from the Eyring equation (a high positive value at 0.1 MPa) slightly increases with compression. We suggested that the reason for that are probably small conformational variations of TICA molecules at elevated p.