The recent EU’s Spring summit in Brussels highlighted a worrying situation as regards R&D, innovation and competitiveness in Europe. The ambitious goals set forth in 2000 to make the EU “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010” are still somewhat far from being achieved after five years. According to the Commission’s proposals and remarks that followed the mid-term review of the Lisbona agenda, the goal of spending 3 percent of GDP in R&D would be reach only in 2045 instead of 2010 on

China is changing gear. President Wen Jabao has recently announced at the National congress of People the need for the Chinese economy to move from a ‘pure’ quantitative growth toward a new type of development focused on quality. The increase in the gross internal margin for 2005 is still expected to be about 8%, a figure well far above the standards for western economies. Indeed, for China this reflects a decelaration of the economical growth (- 1.5% with respect to 2004) and a more cautious approach to both internal and international markets, in order to reduce the risk of inflation and to create some 9 million new laborplaces

This article provides an overview of the European active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market. The fragmented and highly competitive market presents many challenges to API manufacturers such as overcapacity, lack of capability differentiation and low cost competition from Asian manufacturers. This article provides strategies on tackling major challenges and enumerates elements of business planning and monitoring for a comprehensive approach. An integrated plan based on speedy delivery and cost competitiveness can be implemented for

ComGenex is a dynamic company offering medicinal chemistry services and drug discovery technologies. ComGenex employs the latest technologies to synthesize complex structures and combinatorial libraries, provide unique reagents and challenging intermediates, as well as comprehensive analytical services and full product characterization. ComGenex is a truly global company headquartered in Budapest, with offices in Princeton and San Francisco (US) and representatives in

An article that has recently appeared on a leading scientific journal1 has shown the results of a comparative study between drug CLOPIDROGEL by Sanofi-Synthélabo and the generic copies currently on the market. The article showed that the situation is much more serious than what we could have expected, with basically all of the generic drugs checked having significant discrepancies compared to the control drug as regards compliance with pharmacopoeia standards. In other words their quality was strongly questionable, if not

The Suzuki reaction1 is a powerful synthetic tool for the formation of carbon-carbon bonds. Boronic acids and esters have become very important building blocks in organic synthesis through these coupling protocols. Synthetically versatile arylboronate are prepared from bis(pinacolato)diboron (PIN2B2) and pinacolborane (PINB), both commercially available. Miyaura first reported the preparation of aryl boronates from aryl halides and PIN2B2 using palladium catalysis2. Masuda pioneered the palladium catalyzed borylation reaction of aryl halides with PINB to prepare arylboronates3. The borylation reaction with PIN2B2

The vast majority of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and thus also many of the intermediates of these compounds contain a nitrogen moiety. This structural feature may serve as a basic core, may influence the physical properties such as solubility or polarity, and may be the pharmacophore for biological activity in itself. In many cases, these motifs are derived from diversely substituted anilines. From a synthetic point of view, the retrosynthetic strategy apart from well known techniques such as nitro group reduction or reductive amination is the direct build-up of the desired C-N bond. This approach allows the design of a convergent synthesis instead of a linear approach. In this way, the desired

Since the discovery in 1991, a tremendous research activity in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has been carried out worldwide. Carbon nanotubes are graphene sheets rolled-up into cylinders with nanometer size diameter. The paper reviews the preparation methods of these novel materials and their potentiality as building blocks for various applications in nano-electronics, nano-optics, nanocomposites. Controlling the nanotubes growing process and improving their properties through functionalization methods are major opportunities and challenges for chemistry and chemical egineering. Before 1985 diamond (Fig. 1a) and graphite (Fig. 1b) were the two (formerly six) known forms of crystalline

Carbon nanotubes, which consist of rolled graphene layers built from sp2 carbon units have attracted the attention of scientists, not only from a fundamental point of view but also from technological grounds. Numerous physicochemical properties of carbon nanotubes, such as their electronic, mechanical, optical and chemical characteristics, arise from the quantum confinement of states in the circumferential direction of the cylinders. In this paper, a historical review and basic structure of carbon nanotubes are presented briefly. Keywords: quantum size effect, curvature, graphene

A key requirement in the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) technology is to develop a method able to produce well positioned structures of nanotubes with uniform and reproducible properties, simple to integrate within the manufacturing process of electronic devices. The catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) of carbon nanotubes is a fully compatible technique with the ultra large scale integration process of the microelectronic industry. For this reason we have developed site-selective CCVD synthesis on substrates where patterned islands of catalyst

The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) was founded in 1995 following the introduction of the European system for authorising medicinal products; since then the Agency has greatly increased its influence and field of operations. The recent final release of “ The European medicines Agency Road Map to 2010: Preparing the Ground for the Future” document results from the need to update the field of operations as well as the parties networking with EMEA. The new European pharmaceutical legislation will come into force in November 2005. This, together with EU enlargement in 2004 and the need to optimise policies and the resulting operative networks among authorities, stakeholders and partners, led the

RSC AWARD TO DAVE HADDLETON The Entrepeneur of the Year award from the Royal Society of Chemistry was granted this year to Dave Haddleton, founder and Chief executive officer of Warwick Effect Polymers (WEP). ‘I am extremely proud to have received this prestigious award. The industry is evolving to welcome many focused SME’s and this award is an important step in the recognition and encouragement of entrepreneurial activity’, commented Haddleton. WEP born in 2001 as a spin-off from the chemistry department of the University of Warwick to develop living and controlled

Ingenza Ltd. is a biocatalyst and bioprocess development company based in Edinburgh, UK. The company, founded in 2002, now employs ten scientists (8 PhD level), integrating expertise in molecular biology, high throughput screening, fermentation, bioprocess development and synthetic chemistry. Ingenza’s leading proprietary technology is a scalable chemo-enzymatic deracemisation process which can prepare enantiomerically pure amino acids and amines from laboratory to industrial scale

Founded in Ireland by Dr. Brian Kelly and Dr. Declan Gilheany, Celtic Catalysts is an innovative chemical discovery and development company focusing on providing its end-user clients and partners in the Pharmaceutical and Fine Chemical industries with a pioneering set of specific chemistries as well as customised screening strategies to quickly select from its chiral ligand collections the optimal ligand for their applications. Celtic Catalysts has created a development program dedicated to providing the chiral industry with an unrivalled diversity of ligands and catalysts for use in asymmetric