Interesting, thanks and will check out ARQL. Meanwhile did a little
cursory digging on chiral supplirs. Found a list on Infoseek as follows:
Pharmaceutical Intermediates, Chiral:
Cascade Biochem Ltd. (Reading, UK)
Chiroscience Group plc (Cambridge, UK)
Lonza (Basel, Switz)
Pfanstiehl Labs (Waukegan ILL)
Regis Technologies Inc. (Morton Grove ILL)
Siber Hegner Raw Materials Ltd., Pharm Div (Zurich Switz)
Strem Chemicals Inc. (Newbury Port MA)
Don't know much about many of them. But I think most are bit
players. I used to deal with and compete with Pfanstiehl. Their main biz is carbohydrate chemicals like rare sugars.
So they are not a competitor to ChiRex in any real sense.
Others like Siber Hegner may be mainly distributors. (If my
memory serves Siber Hegner acquired some parts of Penick Corp. from CPC Intl some years ago, a strange little co in the legal
opium biz (codeine etc) among other things). Chiroscience Group
is a public co. on the London Exchange, but seems not much more
than a startup, with revenue of some 4 mil pounds and operating
losses.
Yesterday's news release about CHRX's exclusive license for
Kinetic Resolution technology from Harvard U. was interesting.
Does this put CHRX in the forefront? We shall see.
Meanwhile my main interest so far besides the chirals again is in peptide, carbohydrate chemistry and glycobiology, for instance in compounds that would inhibit growth of blood vessels to tumors. Bachem in Switz for example is a big peptide producer, can't find yet if they are publicly listed. |
