Developing flow chemistry for pharma

AM Technology (UK) has joined an EU-funded project that seeks to develop flow processes for the industrial synthesis of pharmaceutical compounds.

The Pharmagen project, which is being coordinated by Serichim Srl (Italy) and has five other partners, will use a multidisciplinary approach to tackle the obstacles that face the development of flow chemistry techniques for industrial pharmaceutical processes.

"There is no question that flow chemistry can deliver impressive benefits to the pharmaceutical industry in terms of reduced manufacturing cost, lower carbon footprint and reduced pollution," Robert Ashe, Managing Director of AM Technology, told Pharmaceutical Technology Europe. "The problem is that many of the process materials used in the industry are difficult to handle under flow conditions."

"The Pharmagen project brings together a very strong combination of skills from manufacturing, simulation and process design. Our own contribution to the project will be to design and build the flow reactors," said Ashe. "AM Technology have many years experience in reactor design and we have recently demonstrated with our Coflore ACR systems that difficult process materials such as slurries and gas/liquid mixtures can be handled effectively with the use of dynamic mixing and close coupled multi cell channels. This project is going to yield some very interesting results."

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