WEST CHESTER, Pa. (June 10, 2010) — Chiral Technologies, Inc. (CTI), the world's leading supplier of chirality tools, is partnering with Vanderbilt University’s Program in Drug Discovery (VPDD) to supply enantioselective chiral chromatography columns and custom separation services. VPDD is a premier university-run drug discovery program. It employs more than 60 scientists working with major pharmaceutical companies, government laboratories and private foundations to accelerate speed and enhance the drug discovery and development processes.
At the beginning of the partnership, VPDD sent a novel racemic compound to CTI to identify a separation method utilizing its extensive portfolio of chiral stationary phases. CTI successfully developed a method for this sample using a CHIRALPAK® IA column. CTI continues to work with VPDD on method development projects and supplies the program with various enantioselective chiral chromatography columns, including CHIRALPAK IA and IC immobilized columns. This enables VPDD to resolve similar compounds in-house and determine their enantiomeric purity.
“Chiral molecules are important building blocks and potential drug candidates. The biological testing of resolved enantiomers has resulted in very interesting and unexpected activities,” said Dr. Craig W. Lindsley, medicinal chemistry director for VPDD.
“Establishing and maintaining a comprehensive in-house prep infrastructure is prohibitively expensive,” said Chris Denicola, director of analytical chemistry for VPDD. “Chiral Technologies not only supplies columns, it also assists us in our research and method development and small-scale prep work, which we would not otherwise be able to perform in our laboratories."
“In recent years, the need to obtain pure enantiomers through chromatography has grown dramatically,” said Mark McDonald, vice president of sales and marketing for Chiral Technologies, Inc. “We are committed to the advancement of Vanderbilt’s drug discovery program, and we are pleased to support such a prestigious R&D endeavor."
For more information about Chiral Technologies, visit http://www.chiraltech.com. To learn more about the Vanderbilt Program in Drug Discovery, visit http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/labs/lindsley.
About Chiral Technologies Worldwide
Chiral Technologies Worldwide, the global leader in enantioselective chromatography, serves pharmaceutical and other life science industries and offers the largest portfolio of chiral stationary phases (CSPs) and analytical and preparative chiral columns for the separation of racemic mixtures into single enantiomers. The company also provides analytical method development and custom separation services. Chiral Technologies Worldwide serves the North American market through Chiral Technologies Inc. (West Chester, Pa.) and the European market through Chiral Technologies Europe SAS (Illkirch, France), wholly-owned subsidiaries of Daicel Chemicals Industries Ltd. www.chiraltech.com and www.chiral.fr
