Drug Discovery

A biotech company contacted us in search of a provider for chemical services. The goals were to generate Intellectual Property as fast as possible in two different projects where hits were available. The synthetic route which was being used was too long and unreliable, and did not offer flexibility enough to introduce diversity. For the other project, no route was available, only structures drawn on a paper.

We put two people to work in each project, and for one and a half year routes were scouted, tested and optimised. Routes were on average eight steps for each. We generated, tested and improved upon compounds during the lead finding (or hit-to-lead) stage. When one critical commercial raw material was scarce, we developed a procedure to prepare the starting material from cheap, common substances and a catalyst, removing dependence on the suppliers.

In the end, four patents were generated, increasing the value of the biotech company. One of the projects reached lead-optimisation stage and bigger quantities of specific compounds were required. Scale-up was performed and compounds delivered in time for in vivo assays.