The main goal of a novel drug development is to obtain it with optimal physiochemical, pharmaceutical and biological properties. Pharmaceutical companies and scientists modify active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which often are cocrystals, salts or carefully selected polymorphs, to improve the properties of a parent drug. To find the best form of a drug, various advanced characterization methods should be used. In this review, we have described such analytical methods, dedicated to solid drug forms. Thus, diffraction, spectroscopic, thermal and also pharmaceutical characterization methods are discussed. They all are necessary to study a solid API in its intrinsic complexity from bulk down to the molecular level, gain information on its structure, properties, purity and possible transformations, and make the characterization efficient, comprehensive and complete. Furthermore, these methods can be used to monitor and investigate physical processes, involved in the drug development, in situ and in real time. The main aim of this paper is to gather information on the current advancements in the analytical methods and highlight their pharmaceutical relevance.

新药开发的主要目标是获得具有最佳物理化学，药物和生物学特性的药物。制药公司和科学家修改了通常是共晶体，盐或精心挑选的多晶型物的活性药物成分（API），以改善母体药物的性能。为了找到药物的最佳形式，应使用各种高级表征方法。在这篇综述中，我们描述了专门针对固体药物形式的此类分析方法。因此，讨论了衍射，光谱，热以及药物表征方法。从固体到分子水平研究固体API固有的复杂性，获得有关其结构，性质，纯度和可能的转化的信息，以及提高表征效率，这些都是必不可少的。全面而完整。此外，这些方法可用于监视和调查参与药物开发的物理过程，就地和实时。本文的主要目的是收集有关分析方法的最新进展的信息，并强调它们的药物相关性。