Drug discovery is a very time consuming process, with one of the slowest steps being the synthesis and purification of potential candidates. Several companies have acknowledged that the miniaturisation of chemical reactors offer many fundamental and practical advantages of relevance to the pharmaceutical industry, who are constantly searching for automated, high throughput methods for the synthesis and purification of products with a high degree of chemical selectivity.
In this presentation a number of chemical reactions of pharmaceutical interest will be used to illustrate the advantages that micro reactors offer for the rapid optimisation of reactions, in which the product is typically produced in both higher yield and purity. It will be illustrated that compounds may be prepared and purified within an integrated system, in sufficient quantities for biological evaluation to be performed. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that it is possible to generate intermediates in situ within the reactor, which may then be subsequently reacted to produce more complex products. It will also be shown that integration of the micro reactor to a highly sensitive microchannel-based biological assay system would enable rapid screening to be performed.
Back to Automation for the Chemical Laboratory
Back to The 56th Southeast Regional Meeting 2004 (November 10-13, 2004)