"In today's market, it is not enough simply to offer a large base of technologies;
the focus must be on the willingness to provide innovation and integration within those
chemistries and offer solutions to customer problems."
----Winston Gore
Demands for Chiral Chemicals
Since the beginning of 1990s’, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations
called for each enantiomer of the racemate be pharmacologically verified and presented for
clinical scrutiny. This stringent regulatory change became the strongest driving forces
for the development of chiral technology. It was found that 80% of the pharmaceuticals in
development are single optical isomers. It was reported that the demands for chiral raw
materials, intermediates, and active ingredients grows by 10% annually in the past years.
According to the Frost & Sullivan study, worldwide revenues due to chiral technology,
which amounted to $4.8 billion in 1999, will more than triple to $14.9 billion by 2009.
Chiral Technologies
There are four generally regarded methods of making chiral compounds ---chiral pool,
resolution of racemates, chemical asymmetric synthesis and biological asymmetrical
synthesis (See Figure 1). While it seems clear that asymmetric synthesis through chemical
and biological means will dominate over the next decade, their intrinsic limitations will
ensure continuing parallel interest in the more established chiral pool and resolution
methods that are widely available. As a result, all chiral technologies will remain an
active area of research, albeit with differing levels of progress. Chiral pool and
resolution together currently contribute most to revenues due to the application of chiral
technology (55%), followed by chemical (35%) and biological (10%) asymmetric methods (See
Figure 2). The data reflect the continuing importance of the traditional methods, which
form the backbone of many chiral portfolios.
Figure 1
Figure
2 
(Click image to enlarge)
Along with our partners, D-L Chiral Chemicals can provide you a full spectrum of chiral
technologies. Based on our many years’ process development experience in
pharmaceutical industry, we are confident that we can make the most chiral compounds in
large scale.
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