Aesica forges alliance with UK university on API synthesis
pharmafile | May 8, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â AesicaÂ
UK contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) Aesica has teamed up with the University of Nottingham to develop new ways to form amide bonds, widely regarded as one of the most important reactions in organic chemistry.
Amide bonds are commonly found in active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and other biologically-active compounds, particularly peptides and proteins, but the linkages can be challenging – as well as environmentally-unfriendly and costly – to synthesise.
Aesica set up a group called the Aesica Innovation Board (AIB) last year to try to forge ties with academic institutions to tackle R&D challenges and identify early-stage technologies for commercial development.
To date the AIB has announced partnerships with the Universities of Bradford, Leeds and Durham on a range of pharma manufacturing topics over the last six months, and the latest agreement with Nottingham University takes its tally to four.
“The partnership’s aim is to revolutionise traditional amide formation techniques by generating alternative methods for amide bond formation, which will be more eco-friendly and chemically versatile,” said Aesica.
“This innovative approach will be commercially available to Aesica customers in the next two to three months,” it added, noting that it promises to make use of more sustainable reagents, lower production costs and potentially increase chemical yields.
The technology is based on coupling agent identified in 2005 that has already been shown effective in small-scale studies, and Aesica’s involvement in the project will focus on scaling it up to commercial utility.
A review article by Vijaya Pattabiraman and Jeffrey Bode – published in Nature – notes that “current methods for amide formation are remarkably general but at the same time widely regarded as expensive and inelegant”, and represent a major obstacle for the synthesis of proteins.
Meanwhile, a recent survey conducted by the Green Chemistry Institute Roundtable identified that amide bond formation was utilised in 84% of a set of drug candidates.
Aesica said it is seeking commercial opportunities to work with potential compounds that could benefit from this novel technology.
Phil Taylor
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