Improving production of crystalline medications
Improving production of crystalline medications
August 27, 2025
Gerard Capellades and his lab team research crystal formation to improve the production of pharmaceuticals such as acetaminophen.
Gerard Capellades, Ph.D.
Chemical engineer
Areas of expertise:
Chemical separation and crystallization of organic molecules
More informationCrystals—solids which have a highly organized internal structure—are everywhere. The salt in shakers, the metal in cars, semiconductors in computer chips, even chocolate and kidney stones are crystalline. So too do medicines delivered as tablets or powder-filled capsules.
Gerard Capellades, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemical engineering in the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering, studies crystallization, or crystal formation, in the production of pharmaceuticals. His findings have the potential to improve the processes for making crystalline medications, which include painkillers, antibiotics and antidepressants.
A drug’s effectiveness depends on its active ingredient, which chemists synthesize through a series of chemical reactions. Once they have this ingredient, however, they must eliminate the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other compounds left from these reactions that could be potentially harmful for the patients. Crystallization, often accomplished by simply lowering the temperature, is one of the cheapest and most effective forms of purification, according to Capellades.
Research in his lab focuses on impurities, typically defined as undesirable substances within crystals. However, he is also exploring how drug makers could employ desirable additives as dopants to intentionally alter the crystal’s properties, much like how it is done for metal alloys or semiconductors. Their work focuses on two questions: How do impurities and additives incorporate into crystals? And how do they affect the crystals’ properties?
One material his group uses to study these processes is acetaminophen (better known as the active ingredient in Tylenol®). They adulterate its white crystals with a clearly visible impurity, such as the bright yellow spice turmeric, and examine their change in behavior under a microscope.
His lab is also studying how the properties of the crystallization environment affect crystal formation, research that could improve the purification of large-molecule pharmaceuticals, such as peptides or monoclonal antibodies.
“Crystallization is much more efficient than current methods for purifying these drugs, but it’s much more difficult to implement for larger molecules,” he says.
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