Flow Synthesis of Pharmaceuticals: Feeding into an Emerging Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry in South Africa
Darren Riley, Seniour Lecturer, University of Pretoria
In the pharmaceutical industry drug discovery groups must continually
aim to develop new and innovative treatments for diseases, but at the
same time drugs need to be readily available and affordable to those who
need them. A key problem the industry faces is that synthetic chemistry
both on small and large scales has become reliant on batch processing
technologies that have remained essentially unchanged over the last
hundred years. The last decade has however seen growing interest from
both from academia and big pharmaceutical manufacturers like Merck Sharp
Dohme, Pfizer, and Novartis in the use of continuous flow chemistry to
overcome some of these shortfalls.
To date the technology has been viewed as somewhat disruptive with
respect to batch-based manufacturing and presented will be highlights
from our endeavours to feed into an emerging pharmaceutical
manufacturing industry based in South Africa which is not constrained by
existing infrastructure. The development of new flow routes to
pharmaceuticals such as Celecoxib, Clozapine, Donepezil, Fluoxetine and
Tenofovir Diisoproxil Fumarate will be shown. Routes developed have in
many cases shown significant improvements in yields and reaction times,
and in several instances have allowed the development of greener process
routes.
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