UK researchers claim advance in chiral manufacturing
pharmafile | October 31, 2011 | News story | Manufacturing and Production | Cambridge University, chiral manufacturig, chiral manufacturing
Researchers from the UK says a new technique which uses metal surfaces as templates to make drug compounds with specific molecular arrangements could lead to a breakthrough in pharmaceutical manufacturing.
The approach relies on the concept of chirality, in other words a molecule which can exist as a mirror-image of itself and so cannot be superimposed, even though the components making up the molecule are the same. Organic compounds such as amino acids, sugars and many pharmaceuticals exist in these mirror-image forms, known as optical enantiomers.
Whether a compound is optically left or right ‘handed’ has always been a major consideration in the pharmaceutical industry. The majority of new drugs being introduced are made in one chiral form, because the therapeutic effect is often tied strongly to just one enantiomer.
This has led to an increased market for tools and techniques used in their production, and chemists often have to use convoluted synthetic pathways and catalysts to isolate the required structure.
Now, researchers from Cambridge University have developed a technique whereby a metal surface that lacks mirror symmetry can be used to encourage the synthesis of a single enantiomer.
“Research into controlling chiral synthesis focuses mainly on using homogeneous catalysts, where the catalyst is in the same phase as the reactants and products, such as a liquid added to a liquid-phase reaction”, according to the team, led by Dr Stephen Driver.
“However, this poses significant practical challenges in recovering the valuable catalyst material from the mixture”.
Overcoming this problem could be achieved by using a catalyst fixed to and spread over a solid surface, and the researchers have shown that this approach is feasible using copper single-crystal surfaces to encourage the formation of a single chiral form of the amino acid alanine.
“These results are very exciting,” said Professor Sir David King, former chief scientific advisor to the UK Government and current director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford.
“We see a real basis here for a breakthrough technology in the pharmaceuticals sector”, he added.
The research is published in the journal Topics in Catalysis. More information can be found here.
Phil Taylor
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