Case Study 3 – Major Pharma Client

•        Celtic Catalysts were introduced by one of its manufacturing partners to the US division of a major Pharma.   The Pharma client had a chiral drug which was about to enter phase II clinical trials.  The manufacturing route at that time involved downstream resolution to produce a single enantiomer of the key drug intermediate.

•        Celtic Catalysts undertook an initial screening of its proprietary catalysts which led to a “hit” – giving the desired enantiomer in 100% yield and 99.8%ee at a spectacularly low catalyst loading of 100,000:1

•        Celtic Catalysts subsequently undertook scale-up and optimisation work reproducing these results at multi-gram and kg scale.  In addition we also did some further development to the overall process enabling telescoping of some key steps before transferring to our manufacturing partner who produced pilot-scale batches at the 10’s of kg scale.

•        Phase II clinical trials are ongoing but estimated need for this compound at maturity is 50metric tons.

•        It is estimated that as a result of using Celtic Catalysts’ technology the cost to the Pharma client of the key intermediate will drop from US$800 per kg to ca.US$200 per kg.