Changing attitudes toward chiral technologies, particularly emerging asymmetric and biological techniques, herald a new era, according to this latest market report
Fuelled by an expanding pharmaceuticals industry, fine chemicals companies are increasingly adding chiral competency to their portfolios.
Today, the rapidly developing small molecule chiral technology industry is witnessing a flurry of activity.
While traditional methods of chiral production such as resolution and chiral pool chemistry are firmly established, emerging asymmetric and biological methods are generating huge interest and are the focus of intensive research.
Meeting demand from the pharmaceuticals industry for the production of optically pure molecules - including active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and intermediates which are used as the framework for single enantiomer drugs - remains the primary focus of contemporary chiral technology.
Stringent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations calling for single enantiomer data, whereby each enantiomer of the racemate is pharmacologically verified and presented for clinical scrutiny, are perhaps the strongest driving forces of chiral technology.
Changing attitudes toward chiral technologies, particularly emerging asymmetric and biological techniques, herald a new era in which companies are exhibiting greater willingness to take an 'opportunity risk' and invest more heavily in these budding technologies. Increasingly, corporate thinking appears to be transitioning from a 'wait-and-watch' to a 'first-to-market' approach to capture these developing technologies.
However, fine chemicals companies are now facing a significant problem as their biggest customers - large pharmaceuticals - cut their outsourcing activities in an effort to save costs.
Under pressure to sustain favourable bottom lines, companies are now looking for new customers and business opportunities in the form of smaller pharmaceuticals that have limited manufacturing capacity but promising pipeline drugs.
Such a move is likely to cause a paradigm shift within the market, as fine chemicals companies begin to rely more and more on smaller pharmaceutical companies to extend their customer base.
In addition, growing interest from biotechnology companies in search of a manufacturing partner for small molecule chirals offers fine chemicals companies an excellent opportunity to replace critical revenues lost due to sluggish pharmaceutical companies.
"Chiral technology companies must change corporate strategy to fully realise the potential of this new, exciting customer base," notes Frost and Sullivan research analyst Matthew Moorcroft.
Fine chemicals companies incur huge costs in adding chiral technology to their portfolios; in most cases they do this by acquiring a university spin-off.
Maintaining this technology poses further problems due to high costs of throwaway catalysts, compelling companies to develop reusable systems.
However, as chiral techniques mature, declining costs will allow all companies access to public-domain technologies that were otherwise outside their operating budgets. Another prominent trend witnessed is the pursuit of a broad technology portfolio by fine chemicals companies.
Rising pressure from end users such as the pharmaceuticals industry that are keen to realise cost efficiencies, compels companies to offer expertise in all areas of production and manufacture chiral material in the cheapest manner possible.
Keeping up with competitors that decide to extend their chiral toolboxes also challenges companies to be innovative, flexible and offer an extensive technological portfolio.
However, as Moorcroft notes, "In today's market, it is not enough simply to offer a large base of technologies; the focus must be on the willingness to provide innovation and integration within those chemistries and offer solutions to customer problems." Among the emerging technologies, asymmetric synthesis has enjoyed a very high profile in recent years and will continue to flourish with extensive academic and industrial investment.
Sustained catalyst development throughout the 90s has made it possible for enantiomeric excess (ee) purities to frequently exceed 99% today, in addition to producing a whole host of asymmetric ligands and auxiliaries.
This has created a need for thorough theoretical interrogation, which will ultimately benefit the area and bring down current costs through intelligent design and modification of existing catalytic and synthetic processes.
"Through design and manufacture of systems that can be recycled in an effective manner, existing cost implications will ultimately become less prohibitive to companies that are interested in developing asymmetric technology expertise," says Moorcroft.
Over the past decade, high enzyme selectivity has ensured that innovative biological methods have remained at the forefront of scientists' imagination, and is likely to remain a significant driver for the growth and widespread acceptance of these technologies in the long term.
Regio-, stereo-, and chemo-selectivity all help save time and costs by dramatically reducing the number of synthetic steps required, thereby enabling a single biotransformation.
While it seems clear that asymmetric synthesis through chemical and biological means will dominate over the next decade, their intrinsic limitations will ensure continuing parallel interest in the more established chiral pool and resolution methods that are widely available.
In conclusion, it is generally agreed that the most prudent corporate strategy to adopt involves establishing and maintaining a broad portfolio. "Companies must swiftly develop critical mass in their product portfolio through acquisition of various chiral techniques to remain competitive and attract the larger clients such as big pharmaceuticals.
As a result, all chiral technologies will remain an active area of research, albeit with differing levels of progress," states Dr.
Moorcroft.
Frost and Sullivan's Analysis Of Developments In Global Chiral Technology Markets, report code B105, is published in June 2003 at a price of US$5000.
