Thermally induced solid-state transformation of cimetidine. A multi-spectroscopic/chemometrics determination of the kinetics of the process and structural elucidation of one of the products as a stable N3-enamino tautomer

• Thermally stressed cimetidine above its melting point affords a stable N3 tautomer.
• Multi-spectroscopic/chemometric approach developed to monitor tautomerization.
• First combined use of NMR, UV and IR spectroscopies with chemometrics.
• Solid cimetidine suffers first order degradation upon submission to dry heat.
• Theoretical chemistry analysis confirmed the relative stability of cimetidine tautomer.

Exposure of cimetidine (CIM) to dry heat (160–180 °C) afforded, upon cooling, a glassy solid containing new and hitherto unknown products. The kinetics of this process was studied by a second order chemometrics-assisted multi-spectroscopic approach. Proton and carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), as well as ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopic data were jointly used, whereas multivariate curve resolution with alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) was employed as the chemometrics method to extract process information. It was established that drug degradation follows a first order kinetics.One of the products was structurally characterized by mono- and bi-dimensional NMR experiments. It was found to be the N3-enamino tautomer (TAU) of CIM, resulting from the thermal isomerization of the double bond of the cyanoguanidine moiety of the drug, from the imine form to its N3-enamine state.The thus generated tautomer demonstrated to be stable for months in the glassy solid and in methanolic solutions. A theoretical study of CIM and TAU revealed that the latter is less stable; however, the energy barrier for tautomer interconversion is high enough, precluding the process to proceed rapidly at room temperature.

Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slide