Prokaria and Wacker Specialties collaborate on chiral alcohols competence centre

Wacker Specialties, of Germany and Icelandic company Prokaria have signed an r&d agreement in the field of chiral alcohols.

Following initial collaboration between Wacker and Juelich Fine Chemicals (JFC) in 2003, the new agreement is a further step toward setting up a chiral alcohols competence centre for the pharmaceutical industry. The growing demand for chiral alcohols as building blocks is due to a strong shift in new drug substances towards chiral molecules. One of the most efficient ways to produce enantiomerically pure chiral alcohols is by stereospecific reduction of ketones via biocatalysis.

Under the terms of the agreement, Prokaria, a leading company in sequence-based discovery and screening of natural diversity from extreme environments, will commence a programme to select rationally and develop novel biocatalysts for the synthesis of complex chiral alcohols. Designed to leverage Iceland's rich biodiversity pool, the approach makes use of the company's exclusive rights to take commercial samples in most of Iceland's geothermal areas.

The third player in the team, Juelich Fine Chemicals (JFC), based in Juelich, Germany, will be involved in functional screening and evaluation work.

The three companies intend to extend the product range of chiral alcohols (b-hydroxyesters, hydroxyke-tones, diols and a-chloroalcohols) based on the rich pool of keto compounds already marketed by Wacker Specialties. JFC will handle lab and kilogram-scale demand, while Wacker will cover ton-scale business and will further complement biocatalysis by means of its organic synthesis and silane chemistry expertise.