When combined with a resolution technology, the SCRAM racemisation catalyst converts inactive enantiomer material back into usable solution, offering substantially improved process yields, efficiency and ruggedness, with corresponding lower starting material costs, solvent consumption and process waste.
Since almost 50 per cent of all new drugs contain at least one chiral centre, the new technology has potential to deliver major savings to the pharmaceutical industry.
Indeed, laboratory studies have illustrated, according to NPIL, that SCRAM's application to currently manufactured drugs could result in millions of euros in cost savings and reduction of process waste on a thousand-tonne scale.
"Based on a stable catalyst and a simple, robust process, SCRAM fits the major agendas of both sustainability and cost of goods," said NPIL Pharma (UK) technology director John Blacker.
"SCRAM is easily coupled to existing production set-ups, and its ease and speed of application to both early and late-phase operations underlines the breadth of its potential."
NPIL Pharma is looking to become a global "top three" player in pharma custom services by integrating manufacturing capability in India with acquired European and North American centres of excellence in early-phase technologies and production assets, such as the SCRAM platform.
Developed by an NPIL Pharma team at the ex-Avecia facility in Huddersfield, UK, the catalyst technology can either be "bolted on" to existing resolution processes or used as a commercially attractive alternative to asymmetric synthesis, benefiting equally early/late phase clinical and launched product manufacturing.
To develop and extend SCRAM-based technology, NPIL has recently received a £500,000 (€745,000) R&D grant from regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, matching its own research investment.
Under the two-year £1m programme, the project will look to develop SCRAM racemisation and linked resolution technologies to full commercialisation in pharma intermediate production.
The project will also explore wider applications, notably in the high-productivity area of continuous flow processing, in combination with bio and chemo-catalysis.
SCRAM is from the same team that developed and commercialised the well-known, award-winning CATHy and CACHy chiral technologies.
The name SCRAM does not reflect the frustration of the team with undesired enantiomers but is attributed to its co-inventor and final year PhD student Matthew Stirling who lent his initial to the trademark: Stirling's Catalytic Racemisation Alcohols and AMines.