Almac and University College Cork enter research project

Published: 12-May-2010

Researchers will apply new technologies to produce molecular structures from powder X-ray data


Contract research organisation Almac, based in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, and University College Cork have formed a partnership focused on applying new technologies to produce 3D molecular structures from powder X-ray data.

With current X-ray technology, it is necessary to generate a single crystal to extract such structural information, says Almac. This can problematic and the pharmaceutical industry has been seeking alternatives.

The Pharmaceutical Solids group of the Analytical and Biological Chemistry Research Facility, UCC (Anita Maguire, Simon Lawrence, Humphrey Moynihan, plus more than 10 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers) and the Almac Physical Sciences group (Linda McCausland and Noel Hamill) will carry out the research. Post doctoral researcher Dr László Fábián will join the latter team to provide specialist expertise in powder diffraction.

The partnership has been principally funded by the Science Foundation Ireland.

‘The UCC/Almac collaboration is strategic to the progression of our academic goals and will be of great benefit to the students of UCC, the research community and the Irish pharmaceutical sector as a whole,’ said Maguire, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry and director ABCRF at UCC.

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