Organic chemistry

Automation Of Solid/Powder Dispensing: Much needed, but cautiously used! By Dr John Comley This article investigates solid/powder dispensing in pharma and biotech, examines where it is most used, whether there exists a need to apply automation and what is motivating its wider use today. It reveals how concerns over problematic solids and the dispensing technology […]

Overcoming the Limitations of Chemical Structure By Dr Andy Vinter, Dr Steve Gardner and Dr Sally Rose The pharmaceutical business has been profoundly hampered by a ubiquitous and unexpected obstacles; the way it draws its chemical compounds. Scientists, patent agents and business decision makers from R&D, safety, and in-licensing are locked into a world of […]

Letting the Target Determine your Compound Acquisition Strategy By Dr John Harris With compound libraries likely to remain the cornerstone of hit and lead discovery for the foreseeable future, this paper seeks to summarise current and future approaches to optimal library design and compound acquisition, using examples and experimental evidence of the success, limitations and […]

Natural Product Pharmaceuticals – The third generation By Dr Melanie McCullagh Compounds derived from natural products have made a big impact on the pharmaceutical industry. Of the 1,010 NCEs approved between January 1981 and June 2006, 43 were unaltered natural products (NPs) and a further 232 (23%) were second generation NP derivatives (1). The second […]

By Dr Anil Vasudevan Since the original publications on the benefits of conducting organic reactions in a microwave by Gedye (1) and Majetich (2) in the mid-80s, the uptake of this technique was sluggish at best for the next 12-14 years. However, the past few years have witnessed an explosion in the number of publications […]

Perspectives for ADMET Integration in the Discovery Process By Dr Constance Hofer ADMET (ADME/Tox), is a relatively new symbiotic acronym for the investigation of basic compound behaviour in terms of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion, combined with assessments of toxicity. The emergence of ADMET instead of ADME reflects the growing practice of combining in vitro […]

Challenges and opportunities for the greening of separation science in the pharmaceutical industry Dr Christopher J. Welch Opportunities for reducing solvent consumption and waste generation in separation sciences used to support industrial pharmaceutical discovery and development are presented and discussed in this article. Several approaches are considered for ‘greening’ analytical chromatography, where small solvent savings […]

Establishment of an open access compound management facility By David Camp This article covers the establishment of an open access compound management facility in Australia to stimulate applied, basic and translational biomedical research. The paradigm for probing biological processes and drug discovery via small molecules has changed significantly over the past 10-15 years. The previous […]

Kinase Screening and Profiling Products – Spoilt for choice By Dr John Comley The end user is spoilt for choice with the range of alternative offerings, methodologies and approaches currently available for kinase screening and profiling. Whereas wider coverage of the kinome was the principal focus of kinase profiling a few years ago, today’s vendors […]

Genetics & Personalised Medicine – Whole genome association and genetic linkage studies By Dr John W. Hooper Genetic linkage studies have long been the standard for researching the genetics associated with heritable diseases. Recently, however, scientists have begun to realise the benefits of whole genome association studies, which enable them to view the entire human […]