Great Lakes partners with High Force Research

Great Lakes Fine Chemicals (GLFC) has entered into a complementary business partnership with High Force Research.

Under the agreement, High Force will prepare and make available a series of aryl substituted phenylalanines and derivatives for use by the pharma and biotech companies in their new drug screening programmes. Successful candidates will be scaled up by High Force to provide gram to kilo quantities of material for drug development studies. When larger batches of product are required for clinical evaluation GLFC will scale-up the process for quantities ranging from multi-kilo to tonnes.

David Rowles, site manager at GLFC commented: 'It will offer our joint customers access to a range of potentially useful drug building blocks and a seamless scale-up of the process from gram to tonnes. Initially, while the drugs are in their pre-clinical and clinical Phase I and II trials, High Force and GLFC will use the GLFC asymmetric hydrogenation process technology to provide the chiral phenylalanines but as the volumes increase a switch can be made to produce the phenylalanines by patented and proprietary bio-processes. This will provide a cost effective and efficient route for the supply of aryl substituted phenylalanines and their derivatives.'

Bob Redfern, managing director of High Force Research, added: 'This collaboration with Great Lakes enables us to offer an enhanced service to customers with a range of chiral products based on proprietary technology and the combined capability to supply from drug discovery to production scale.'

The company also announced that it has licensed its proprietary Ruthenium BINAP catalyst to Phoenix Chemicals, to assist in the development of cost effective processes for the production of pharmaceutical intermediates. They will jointly explore the scope and applicability of Ruthenium BINAP, and will examine its potential to produce chiral versions of derivatives through the reduction of beta keto esters and olefinic systems. The objective of the licensing agreement is to enable Phoenix to use its own patented technology to manufacture compounds that would have been difficult or expensive to produce using alternative chemical routes.

Dr Phil Cotterill, GLFC's business development manager said: 'We are excited to explore the potential of combining the clean reducing power of Ruthenium BINAP with the specialist technology developed by Phoenix. Both parties are confident that the agreement will result in improved process efficiencies, enhanced product quality and a reduction in manufacturing costs for a number of key intermediates.'