New chiral technologies at Cambrex

Cambrex Corporation, of East Rutherford, NJ, has developed new pathways to chiral molecules used in APIs and advanced intermediates through a business alliance agreement with Dextra Laboratories, based in Reading in the UK. Dextra specialises in the early development of unique sugar and carbohydrate technologies used to produce chiral pharmaceutical building blocks including the synthesis of carbohydrate building blocks, carbohydrate-based libraries, oligosaccharides, monosaccharides, aza sugars, and locked nucleosides.

Using Dextra's technology, Cambrex will generate more complex molecules using its proprietary enzyme technologies coupled with Dextra building blocks to support combinatorial drug discovery with complex, chiral materials of known structure and configuration. 'Our collaboration with Dextra will enhance our in-house capabilities with unique technologies to produce multiple chiral centres and generate more complex molecules with enhanced functionality through the addition of carbohydrate side chains,' said Gary Mossman, president Cambrex Pharma Business Unit.

'This alliance can pave the way to new classes of drug candidates through the provision of hitherto unavailable chiral structures in quantities suitable for practical development work,' commented Dr Andrew Hacking, joint md, Dextra Laboratories.