Strong synthetic chemistry expertise underpins all of IRBM’s efforts in medicinal chemistry, and our clients benefit from both a state-of-the-art infrastructure as well as our practical expertise at turning ideas into something tangible that can be tested. A high percentage of our international team of chemists are trained to PhD level, and the broad industry expertise within IRBM means that a focus on implementing ‘fit-for-purpose’ solutions to your chemistry problems is always at the forefront of our activities. On a practical level, our synthesis-purification-analysis workflows are tailored to streamline productivity, helping our chemists bring their enthusiasm and creativity to bear on your drug discovery project.
Experience – the breadth of synthetic experience at IRBM is impressive and should guarantee that whatever chemistry your project needs will be easily handled. Our projects have ranged from deuterated steroids to complex macrocycles, from nucleoside analogs to challenging heterocycles, from sugars to peptidomimetics. We enjoy synthetic challenges, and are proud of our track record in solving synthetic problems.
Instrumentation – IRBM is well equipped for both traditional synthetic approaches as well as for parallel synthesis and ‘state-of-the-art’ chemistries. Both robotic systems and manual systems such as Bohdan mini-block reactors are available for parallel synthesis workflows. Plate-based chemistries are also often employed to further improve productivity, an example being “straight-to-assay” DMSO based chemistries that can be employed to rapidly expand SAR around leads.
Late stage functionalisation – New synthetic reactions such as single electron transfer processes are increasingly driving a paradigm shift in medicinal chemistry where late-stage functionalisation reactions can expand the diversity of chemical matter for testing. We are well equipped for these chemistries with a dedicated photoredox platform that allows us to rapidly evaluate photoredox cross-coupling approaches. We can do this as part of our synthetic designs, or use it as a tool to decorate and explore bioactive molecules.
Scale-Up Chemistry – the availability of key synthetic intermediates on scale is a key driver of success on research projects. Our projects are supported by a dedicated scale-up laboratory equipped with 10L and 20L thermo-regulated reaction vessels, large scale chromatography, high-volume solvent evaporation and both Karl-Fischer water content and thermal calorimetry instrumentation. Our scale-up lab can also be employed for API precursor production, an area where we have successfully delivered Kg-scale quantities of challenging targets.
