Date: 22 November 2024 | Category: News
Flow chemistry is a well-established method in research and development labs across industry and academia for screening of reagents, optimization of processes and generation of libraries of compounds. Flow chemistry allows safer and faster reactions, but also better control over the reaction conditions, key for reproducibility.
Library synthesis in continuous flow provides ease of integration with advanced analytical equipment and Machine Learning (ML), as well as performing reactions difficult to do in batch (e.g. organometallics, high temperature/pressure, gas/liquid reactions) essential to expand chemical space in library synthesis.
There are limitations that have previously restricted the implementation of High-Throughput Synthesis in flow:
- Dilution of the leading and trailing edges of reaction plugs
- Dilution effects meaning sub 1 ml reaction plugs need small volume reactors that are prone to blocking combined with exceedingly low flowrates
- Reaction plugs must exit the reactor before the next reaction enters limiting throughput.
The above issues drive the current minimum cycle time to be typically ~10 minutes.
Vapourtec has collaborated with a blue-chip fine chemical company to develop a technical solution that will allow any standard Vapourtec R-Series system to run reactions with only 100- 150 µl of reagent. This is achieved by eliminating dispersion. Once there is no dispersion it is possible to increase throughput, enabling one reaction to start every 2-3 minutes.
This exciting new capability will be marketed as an accessory package that will allow any Vapourtec R-Series system equipped with an autosampler to run these small-scale libraries.
At the recent ASF meeting in Oxford, UK Vapourtec presented a poster giving an overview of the project and details of some initial results.
