Chemical Flow: New Advances in the Production of Medicines

Abstract

Continuous flow approaches have recently attracted a lot of attention from synthetic organic chemists as a
viable alternative to the conventional batch method of conducting organic synthesis in sealed containers,
such as test tubes or flasks with round bottoms.1 Up until recently, the petrochemical and bulk chemicals
industries typically used specialised continuous facilities. Nevertheless, these methods have lately become
more popular, especially in academic institutions, for the manufacture of fine chemicals, such as natural
products2 and Active Pharma-ceutical Ingredients (APIs). There are many more applications of flow
technology outside organic chemical production. A landmark investigation conducted by experts from the
Novartis-MIT Centre for Continuous production in Cambridge uncovered the extraordinary end-to-end
continuous manufacture of an API, aliskiren hemifumarate.4 The process details the steps to consistently
execute the required reactions and further operations (such as quench, work up, isolation, and purification)
crystallisations, drying, formulation, and chemical transformations and separations
transformations and separations into a fully automated continuous process is now possible. An astounding
100 g/hour of aliskiren is produced by the Novartis-MIT pilot plant, which has two synthetic steps:
generating the API salt and crystallisation.. This tendency is caused by the basic characteristics of flow
reactorswhich increases the reaction time and, in most cases, productivity when compared to a batch system.6
Measuring temperature is insufficient