The fine chemical company, a member of the Sigma-Aldrich Group, is benefiting from the growth in the oligo market, which is set to reach $776m (€600) by 2010 driven by demand from researchers working in basic research, drug target screening and therapeutic development, as well as manufacturers of biopharmaceuticals.
The new offerings include a line of four Pharmadite Amidites for oligo-based drugs, a trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) C6 Linker, and key additions to the existing line-up of RNA amidites.
Pharmadite Amidites, a key starting material for oligo-based drugs, represent a new class of standard protected DNA phosphoramidites with a highly controlled impurity profile, exceptional overall purity, and non-animal derived starting materials.
Prepared from dimethoxytrityl (DMT)-protected nucleosides and a phosphitylating agent, the new products include DMT-dA(bz) Pharmadite, DMT-dC(bz) Pharmadite, DMT-dG(ib) Pharmadite and DMT-dT Pharmadite.
They are made at SAFC's Hamburg production facility, whose high level of control in the ISO 9001-certified manufacturing process allows a purity specification of greater than or equal to 99.5 per cent for these materials.
Pharmadite products fulfil all the requirements for starting materials in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) as defined by the European Medicines Agency, making them suitable building blocks for oligonucleotide drugs.
What is more, phosphoramidite technology is ideal for the modification of synthetic oligos with covalently attached linkers, so new TFA-protected amino linker is offered with a C6 spacer.
The base labile TFA group is easily removed during cleavage and deprotection, while the amino linker is coupled with standard synthesis protocols, identical to the coupling of DNA monomer phosphoramidites.
Finally, for the highly specialized and evolving RNA market. SAFC offers four new products - DMT-2'O-TBDMS-rA(bz), DMT-2'O-TBDMS-rC(ac), DMT-2'O-TBDMS-rG(ib) and DMT-2'O-TBDMS-rU.
These products complement the existing SAFC Proligo TAC-protected RNA amidites, allowing the choice between using standard synthesis protocols or fast deprotection chemistries.
SAFC's DNA and RNA phosphoramidites are produced in glass-lined reactors and purified by preparatory column chromatography on silica gel with medium- to high-pressure chromatography equipment.
The equipment in place at the Hamburg plant provides an annual capacity of 5 metric tons of purified amidite products and the flexibility to prepare and purify alternative mixes of high volume standard products as well as small scale specialties.