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Pharmaceutical Crystal Engineering for Design, Development and Scale-up of Pharmaceutical Solids

By Prof. Dinesh Kumar   |   IIT (BHU) Varanasi
Learners enrolled: 127
ABOUT THE COURSE:

The course will cover all aspects of the subject including crystallization of active pharmaceutical ingredient, intermediates as well as final products. In addition, precipitations and amorphous solids will be covered and the differences between amorphous solids and crystalline solids will be discussed. Solid state pharmaceutics supporting advanced characterization tools are included as well. Upon the completion of the course, student shall be able to apply scientific principles to the design and development of pharmaceutical crystallization processes.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: UG PG students interested in pharmaceutical crystal engineering and solid-state pharmaceutical characterization

PREREQUISITES: Basics understanding of crystals, crystal engineering, solid pharmaceutical formulations

INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Pfizer, Novartis, Dr Reddy’s laboratories, Granules India, GSK, MSD, BMS
Summary
Course Status : Upcoming
Course Type : Elective
Language for course content : English
Duration : 12 weeks
Category :
  • Chemical Engineering
Credit Points : 3
Level : Undergraduate/Postgraduate
Start Date : 21 Jul 2025
End Date : 10 Oct 2025
Enrollment Ends : 28 Jul 2025
Exam Registration Ends : 15 Aug 2025
Exam Date : 01 Nov 2025 IST
NCrF Level   : 4.5 — 8.0

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.


Page Visits



Course layout

Week 1: Introduction to various solid-state forms of APIs and their application, Principles of pharmaceutical crystallisation, aims of crystallisation, solubility, turbidity, supersaturation, and the metastable zone and metastable zone width, nucleation and crystal growth

Week 2: Methods of crystallization, cooling crystallisations, evaporative crystallisations, anti-solvent crystallisation and melt crystallisation, crystallisation of chiral compounds/resolution

Week 3: Crystallisation design/case studies, designing a crystallisation process, phase diagrams (binary/ternary), Key crystallization parameters, troubleshooting, Industrial examples

Week 4: Continuous crystallization and continuous manufacturing, Pharma industry 4.0, Basic application of AI/ML in pharmaceutical manufacturing with case studies

Week 5: Polymorphism, polymorph screening, characterising polymorphs, regulatory aspects of polymorphs, and Disappearing polymorphs

Week 6: Co-crystals, the applications of co-crystals, prerequisite criteria in terms of chemistry and physicochemical properties to find an ideal co-former, screening methods, characterization methods, regulatory aspects 

Week 7: Solvates and hydrates, characterization of solvates and hydrate, amorphous solids

Week 8: Spectroscopic and diffraction methods of analysing the solid states, Infra-red, Raman, XRPD, Single crystal-XRD, Electron diffraction crystallography (only introduction), identification and differential characterization of physical mixtures, co-crystal and co-amorphous systems

Week 9: Thermal and microscopic methods of analyzing solid-state DSC, TGA, HSM

Week 10: PAT tools, Equipment Considerations and Scale Up

Week 11: Physicochemical characterization of pharmaceutical crystals/co crystals/co-amorphous/solvate/hydrate systems including solubility, powder dissolution, intrinsic dissolution, and mechanical study like indentation, fracture pattern, crack, CTC profiling (compressibility, compactability, Tabletability). Advancements in the solid particle size (sieving. Optical microscopy, electron microscopy, crystallite size by XRD, AI/ML integration, wet/dry methods) and shape (impact of sphericity, aspect ratio, Morphology G4 and other parallel equipment’s) distribution measurements

Week 12: Stability study and formulation development with crystalline materials, Co-processing of active pharmaceutical ingredients, Molecular modelling and simulation studies for polymorphism, crystal habits, amorphous, and co-crystals

Books and references

 1. Crystal Engineering: A Textbook by Arunachalam Ramanan, Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju, and Jagadese Vittal
 2. Solid-State Properties of Pharmaceutical Materials by Stephen R. Byrn, George Zografi, Xiaoming, Chen
 3. Solid State Characterization of Pharmaceuticals by Richard A. Storey and Ingvar Ymén
 4. Physical characterization of Pharmaceutical Solids by Harry G. Brittain
 5. Polymorphism in Pharmaceutical Solids by Harry G Brittain

Instructor bio

Prof. Dinesh Kumar

IIT (BHU) Varanasi
Dr. Dinesh Kumar has been working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Engineering & Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), BHU, Varanasi, India, since Jan 2021. Dr. Dinesh is teaching B Tech, M Pharm, and Ph.D. students. Dr. Dinesh is researching advanced API manufacturing technologies. Before this, Dr. Dinesh worked as a materials scientist and API specialist at SK Biotek, Swords, Dublin, Ireland (https://skbiotek.ie/) from 2017 to 2020. He worked in the API R&D as a specialist and was responsible for API, pre-formulation research, and foreign matter investigations. He also worked in BMS (Bristol Myer Squib), Dublin, Ireland, in 2017. He was a project manager for introducing advanced technologies, which link APIs to formulations such as micronization and spray drying. He represented SK Biotek as an industry reviewer for SSPC (solid-state pharmaceutical cluster in Science Foundation Ireland) projects. He received OPEX award from SK Biotek Dublin in the year 2020.

Before his industrial experience, he completed 2-year Post-Doctoral research in Pharmaceutics at the School of Pharmacy, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He worked on a project funded by SSPC - SFI (Science Foundation of Ireland). During post-doc work, he was involved in collaborative research with reputed institutes and pharmaceutical companies.

He completed a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics at NIPER, Hyderabad, and MS Pharm in Pharmaceutics at NIPER, SAS Nagar, Mohali. He has published ~50 International research papers, and five book chapters and granted two patents by the Govt of India.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.
The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).
Date and Time of Exams: November 01, 2025 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.
Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.
The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.
Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 8 assignments out of the total 12 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Madras .It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team


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