Japan's Daicel Chemical Industries has entered into an agreement with Thesis Chemistry of the US in a deal which will see the two companies collaborate in the area of chiral process manufacturing.
Under the terms of the agreement, Daicel's subsidiary CPI will provide custom manufacturing and biotransformation services related to Thesis' third-party projects.
Thesis specialises in contract supply of developmental quantities of preclinical and clinical drugs, as well as custom manufacture of bulk substances and the sourcing of raw materials and process intermediates used in the manufacture of drugs. The agreement with Daicel brings in expertise in chiral synthesis of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
"Our agreement with Daicel fulfils Thesis' commitment to provide our customers with integrated chemical development services supporting pre-clinical to commercial supply of pharmaceutical chemicals," said John Peterson, Thesis' CEO.
Daicel's technologies in organic synthesis, enzymatic biotransformations (using recombinant bacteria) and chromatographic separations are geared towards the manufacture of chiral pharmaceutical chemicals in quantities up to multi-metric tons.
Takeshi Matsumoto, general manager of CPI, said that the company's focus on Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) chromatography and biotransformations allows it to "obtain the best economic and technical solution for a customer's chiral process."
Thesis already has agreements with Chiral Technologies, another subsidiary of Daicel, for chiral separations, as well as with Regis Technologies for the production of preclinical and clinical drugs and intermediates and with Major Chemicals and S Amit & Co for economical sourcing of raw materials and early processing intermediates from China and India, respectively.