University of Greenwich Expedites Drug Discovery With ThalesNano H-Cube(R)

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY and LONDON and PRINCETON, NJ--(Marketwire - May 05, 2009) -

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A collaboration between groups led by Dr. John Spencer at Greenwich University and Professor Simon Mackay and Professor Alan Harvey at Strathclyde University has led to the discovery of a novel class of benzodiazepines with submicromolar activity against trypanosoma brucei spp., a parasitic species that causes African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness in humans.

Dr. John Spencer, Reader in Medicinal Chemistry, said, "Rajendra Rathnam, one of my PhD students at Greenwich, has successfully synthesized a number of benzodiazepine containing amines by a variety of reduction methods from their nitro precursors including microwave reductions with Molybdenum hexacarbonyl/DBU or Tin (II) Chloride, but the H-Cube® flow method provided compounds in approximately 5 minutes in high yields and without the need for work-up or column chromatography. Such an approach is very promising for the generation of libraries of bioactive molecules and can expedite drug discovery significantly."

The work was recently presented at the prestigious MedChem Europe 2009 Conference in Berlin (organized by Select Biosciences).

"We are proud that our technology can play an important role in advancing science," said Richard Jones, Director of Product Management at ThalesNano. "From its introduction, H-Cube® has opened up vast new areas of chemistry due to its advantages of speed, selectivity and yield."

About ThalesNano Inc.

ThalesNano (www.thalesnano.com) is a world-leading provider of continuous process chemistry instruments in the rapidly developing market of laboratory and process scale flow chemistry reactors. The company has the widest portfolio of bench-top continuous process chemistry instruments. Its R&D 100 award winning H-Cube® continuous-flow hydrogenation reactor and the pilot plant scale version H-Cube Midi™ are used in hundreds of laboratories in four continents and have become the new industry standard for hydrogenation.