CHEM21 Project

Pharmaceuticals and universities working together on multi million pound project

Europe’s largest public-private partnership dedicated to the development of manufacturing sustainable pharmaceuticals has been launched. It’s being led by The University of Manchester and the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.

The €26.4M (£21.2M) project, CHEM21, brings together six pharmaceutical companies, 13 Universities and four small to medium enterprises from across Europe. The aim is to develop sustainable biological and chemical alternatives to finite materials, such as precious metals, which are currently used as catalysts in the manufacture of medicines.

Introducing biotechnology to the manufacturing processes for medicines will limit the drain on the world’s resources and have a lasting benefit on the environment.

Professor Nicholas Turner from The University of Manchester commented “This is a unique opportunity for academic groups to work alongside pharmaceutical companies and specialist SMEs to develop innovative catalytic processes for pharmaceutical synthesis. We believe that challenging problems of this nature are best solved on a pan-European basis by bringing together under one roof the combined expertise of many groups to establish a world-class research hub in catalysis and sustainable chemical synthesis.”

CHEM21 will run initially for four years with funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative. The project will establish a European research hub to act as a source of up-to-date information on green chemistry. It will also develop training packages to ensure that the principles of sustainable manufacturing are embedded in the education of future scientists.

Commenting on the news, John Baldoni from GlaxoSmithKline said: “Improving the sustainability of our drug manufacturing processes through collaborations such as CHEM21 will not only reduce our industry’s carbon footprint, but will provide savings that can be reinvested in the development of new medicines, increase access to medicines through cost reduction and drive innovations that will simplify and transform our manufacturing paradigm”

CHEM21 launched in October and work is already underway on this ground breaking project.

Other members of CHEM21 are: (EFPIA member companies) Bayer Pharma AG, Berlin, Germany; Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Beerse, Belgium; Orion Corporation, Espoo, Finland; Pfizer Limited, Sandwich, UK; Sanofi Chimie, Gentilly, France;  (Universities) Leibniz Institute for Catalysis, Rostock, Germany; Stichting VU-VUMC, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Technische Universität Graz, Graz, Austria; Universität Graz, Graz, Austria; Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany; Universiteit Antwerpen, Antwerp, Belgium; University of Durham, Durham, UK; University of Leeds, Leeds, UK; University of York, York, UK; (Small and medium-sized enterprises – SMEs) CatScI Ltd, Wentloog, Cardiff, United Kingdom: ACIB GmbH, Graz, Austria; Charnwood Technical Consulting Ltd, Quorn, UK: Evolva Biotech A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark; Reaxa Limited, Leeds, UK. CHEM21 has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n°115360, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution.

Professor Nick Turner is available for interviews.

Please contact:

Morwenna Grills
Media Relations Officer
Faculty of Life Sciences
The University of Manchester

Tel: 0161 275 2111
Mobile: 07920 087466
Email: Morwenna.Grills[AT]manchester.ac.uk

Executive summary

CHEM21 is a project that will develop a broad based portfolio of sustainable technologies for green chemical intermediate manufacture aimed at the pharmaceutical industry. Initially working with the EFPIA members the collaborators of CHEM21 will analyse a number of projects that are in development to decide which the priorities are for technology development. This analysis will also be used to update the literature of green technology based on updating previous papers.

The technology being developed is divided into three work packages based on chemical catalysis and synthetic methods, biocatalysis and synthetic biology. The first effort will investigate the use of a range of catalysts with a main focus on replacing and applying catalysts based on common metals rather than the precious metal based catalysts that have limitations of sustainable supply. Use of continuous reactors and process intensification will also be addressed as well as fluorination chemistry. In biocatalysis a range of projects based on the needs identified by the chemical round table have been chosen including amide synthesis, stereo- and regio-specific hydroxylation of complex molecules as well as other redox reactions. Again process engineering and supercritical solvents will be developed as intensification methods. In the third part the development of the emerging field of synthetic biology will be addressed with the development of enzymatic chemical cascade pathways in fermentation strains with freedom to operate to produce targets of interest.

Finally the outcomes of the efforts described will be incorporated into education and training efforts to produce the next generation of process chemists with a good understanding of green and sustainable metrics.