Posts Tagged ‘pharmaceuticals’
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August 13th, 2009
Nanosphere and Lilly collaboration announced
Nanosphere, the nanotechnology-based healthcare organisation, has announced that it has entered into a collaboration with Eli Lilly, one of the world’s leading healthcare companies. This tie-up is in connection with employing pharmacogenetic assays in drug development initiatives. Pharmacogenetics is the study of genetic variation within individuals that gives rise to differing response to drugsNanosphere is probably best known for the Verigene system, which is a benchtop molecular diagnostics workstation that utilises patented gold nanoparticle technology to detect nucleic acid and protein targets of interest for a variety of applications. The company has been developing pharmacogenetic assays specifically for use with the Verigene diagnostic system, an activity which has delivered an exciting commercial opportunity judging by yesterday’s announcement…
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August 10th, 2009
Building drugs with gold
As many of you will know, synthesising drug molecules is a tricky business. Initially, medicinal chemists will concentrate on making relatively small quantities of the molecule, often no mean feat in itself. However, as the project progresses, ever increasing quantities of the drug are required. As this demand increases, the development chemists have to begin thinking more and more carefully about various elements of their process.
An ideal ‘scaleable’ process is safe, cost-effective and rapid. Precious metals have for many years played a vital part in all 3 of these areas in the form of catalysts. Catalysts speed up chemical reactions, often taking away the need for harsh/lengthy processing conditions.
Platinum and palladium (amongst others) are commonly used as catalysts within the pharmaceutical industry for a range of reactions (for a classic example see here). Gold is less commonly employed, but it’s use is undoubtedly on the rise. For example former colleagues of mine at GlaxoSmithKline recently published this tet lett article discussing the development of a gold(I)-catalysed intramolecular alkyne hydroarylation. A number of different metal catalysts were evaluated, with gold proving most effective and ‘process-friendly’. In addition to the improved efficacy, a very low catalyst loading of 0.1 mol % was achieved suggesting an economically viable process was feasible.
Trevor Keel
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