BUSINESS
T3P ® – The New Standard in Peptide Bond Formation and Other Condensations Amide Bond Formations: High Yields – Simple Work-up – No Epimerization T3P ® is an outstanding reagent to achieve quick breakthroughs even for most challenging applications. T3P ® offers a significant cost reduction potential of 20 % on overall costs. F Boc
O F
HN
T3P®
OH
O
DIPEA
Boc
N H F
F
N
N
HN
+
O
one pot NH2
F
Coupling Agent T3P®
Yield (%)
F
ished drug realm. Still, the Patheon and DSM merger was by far the biggest recent bet on establishing a combined service. Nor did Patheon stop with DSM. The company last year acquired Gallus Pharmaceuticals, a biologics manufacturing company with two mammalian cell culture facilities that will complement formerDSM biologics plants in the Netherlands and Australia. Gallus has commercial-scale manufacturing in St. Louis and process development in Princeton, N.J. More recently, Patheon acquired Florence, S.C.-based Irix Pharmaceuticals, a specialist in highly potent and controlled APIs. Next, it bought Agere Pharmaceuticals, based in Bend, Ore., which specializes in improving the absorption rate, or bioavailability, of drugs. Patheon also sold a microbial fermentation facility in Capua, Italy. Patheon’s approach to the market, which it has branded One Source, would rank as a one-stop-shop strategy, offering as it does both large- and small-molecule services from process development through finished drug manufacturing. Lukas Utiger, president of Patheon’s drug substance services, says the firm’s objective has been to build a network linking manufacturing and other services, with a presence in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. The company now has 25 facilities in all. “And clearly we have identified small and mid-sized pharma, mainly located in the U.S., as target customers,” he says. And those firms are interested in the business model, according to Utiger. “We are getting a lot of inquiries,” he says. “There is clear value added with project management and supply chain management. It makes sense when you look at the finance.”
THE MARKET VIEW
Epimerization (%)
87
1.8
DCC/HOBt
61
5.9
EDC/HOBt
67
11.1 16.1
HBTU
66
TBTU
53
9.1
PyBOP
63
14.2
Advantages of T3P ® – Propane Phosphonic Acid Anhydride t High yields and broad functional group tolerance t Easy processes and work-up (only water-soluble by-products) t Mild conditions, typically lowest level of racemization / epimerization without additives t Safe handling, non-toxic, no sensitizing properties t Reduced overall process costs (already several large-scale pharma applications existing; 20 % cost savings possible) t T3P® has been produced by Euticals since decades as a 50 % (w/w) solution in many different solvents t Application examples: amide bond formation, esterifications, conversion of amides / acids into nitriles, isonitrile formation, oxidations and many more.
Request our T3P ® Application package/ free samples:
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phone + 1 908 719 9277
[email protected] RoW: Dr. Peter Pojarliev
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Among those skeptical of the comprehensive manufacturing and services business model are market analysts James Bruno, president of Pharmaceutical & Chemical Solutions, and Roger Laforce, president of Laforce Business Solutions. Both men are on their own after careers in the pharmaceutical chemical industry. Bruno notes that the one-stop-shop concept has a long history and that its popularity cycles in and out with great regularity. But he concedes that the three companies are positioning themselves well for a market in which 60–70% of the projects are coming from service-needy small and virtual pharma companies that are likely to see value in paring down the number of contractors they use. It can be argued that these companies are moving in the right direction, Laforce says, but it remains to be seen whether they are doing it right. Siegfried’s move into China is well timed, he says, affording the company the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of competitors who moved in early. Notably, Siegfried is combining Western business and manufacturing standards with local management in China, Laforce says. Still to be determined is whether large-scale, international operations, which may be the most significant shared facet of WuXi, Siegfried, and Patheon, set the tone for business development in the industry, Bruno and Laforce agree. Here, also, the three firms are following a path already traversed by others. Laforce notes that Hovione and Fabbrica Italiana Sintetici, the Italian firm where he was general manager for eight years, more than doubled in size over a period of time in which Siegfried experienced no such growth. “In the pharmaceutical industry, we copy,” Bruno says. “Nobody wants to be the first.” ◾
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Scientists in Paris and elsewhere in France increasingly are developing new businesses.
ferings (IPOs) of stock that raised a cumulative $190 million, Invest Securities says. The uptick is because the legal and fiscal environment in France has become one of the best in the world for encouraging startups, according to Denis Lucquin, managing partner with Sofinnova, a Paris-based venture capital firm that invests in life sciences companies. “There has been a cultural shift in France in the past 10 years. The entrepreneurial spirit is coming of age,” Lucquin says. THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT encour-
FRANCE’S STARTUP REVOLUTION Start-ups are growing in number but could be undone by a dearth of CAPITAL AND STRICT SOCIAL LAWS ALEX SCOTT, C&EN LONDON
IT WAS WIDELY REPORTED back in 2002 that then-U.S. President George W. Bush told U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that “the trouble with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.” At the time, this raised more than a few hackles across France, where the word was invented. These days, it makes a lot of French people chuckle, not least because entrepreneurism in France is taking off. While the number of technology startups being created in European countries such as the U.K. and Germany has remained relatively steady in recent years, in France they have doubled since 2009, according to data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development, a publicly funded economic think tank. This French phenomenon has been driven partly by tax breaks and R&D reimbursements for start-ups. Although growth in start-ups has skyrocketed compared with the rest of Europe, the situation is far from perfect. French start-ups still face challenges such as scarcity of capital and strict social laws that must be addressed if they are to transition into profitable companies, industry experts say.
There are about 20,000 start-ups in France, of which about 6% are focused on chemistry, according to France’s chemical industry association, UIC. A key piece of legislation encouraging the creation of these start-ups in France is crédit d’impôt recherche. It enables entrepreneurs to recover 30% of their R&D expenses in the form of tax credits or a cash payment. Another important package of legislation is jeune entreprise innovante, which ensures that employees in companies less than eight years old pay lower taxes. In addition to having this supportive legislation, France has a growing track record of crowdfunding to finance start-ups, says Eric Firtion, UIC’s innovation director. Paris-based financial analyst firm Invest Securities has noted an uptick in activity specifically by French biotech start-ups when compared with the rest of Europe. In the first six months of 2015, nine French biotech companies made initial public of-
ages scientists in publicly funded research institutes such as the National Centre of Scientific Research, known as CNRS, to set up their own technology companies. “If they are not successful, they can get their job back two years later,” Lucquin says. Additionally, every good science university in France now has its own start-up seed fund and technology transfer team, he says. Students in France are also much more interested in starting their own companies. “Nothing is better than the U.S. for start-ups, but we have been catching up,” Lucquin says. The quality of the technology being developed in France is also high, according to Alexandre Ouimet-Storrs, a chemical engineer by training who seeks out commercially interesting intellectual property and new technology start-ups for the French venture capital firm Truffle Capital. “France is an incredible country for technology,” he says. “I’m like a hungry kid at a buffet.” Start-ups that Truffle has invested in during the past few years include Cascade Light Technologies, a spin-off from a private technology firm in France. It’s developing an optical film for agricultural greenhouses that increases crop yields by up to 80% by shifting the solar spectrum into the wavelength range most efficient for photosynthesis. Truffle also invested in Deinove, a Paris-based firm started in 2006 to make chemicals from renewable raw materials using engineered Deinococcus bacteria. In addition to raising about $18 million from an IPO and venture capital funding, Deinove has received about $7 million in loans and grants from French public investment bank BPI, says Emmanuel Pet-
“There has been a cultural shift in France in the past 10 years. The entrepreneurial spirit is coming of age.”
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