Exploring Polymorphism: Hydrochloride Salts of Pitolisant and Analogues

Pitolisant hydrochloride is used to treat excessive daytime sleepiness in adults with narcolepsy. The drug is formulated as a crystalline solid, and a monoclinic P2(1) form has been claimed in patents, but little additional information about the structure and polymorphism of the compound has been published. No new forms were obtained when we grew crystals from solution under various conditions. Re-examination of the crystals revealed a disordered and partially hydrated structure that resembles the one reported earlier but is not identical. Further insight was obtained by synthesizing analogues of pitolisant with its Cl substituent replaced by Me, F, and Br, followed by structural analysis of the hydrochloride salts by X-ray diffraction. Pitolisant hydrochloride and its three analogues showed very similar solid-state behavior, and each compound yielded new metastable forms when crystallized from melts. The lifetime of metastable form III of pitolisant hydrochloride could be extended significantly by adding small amounts of the fluoro analogue, but none of the metastable forms could be obtained as single crystals suitable for structural analysis. Computational predictions of the polymorphic landscapes of pitolisant hydrochloride and its analogues identified possible structures of the metastable forms. Dual experimental and computational approaches are already widely used in polymorphic screening, but our work shows the value of broadening these searches to include sets of structural analogues.