How Continuous Flow Chemistry for Pharmaceuticals Works - A Schematic

Biocatalysis have an environmental-friendly nature, high efficiency, and remarkable selectivity for reactions. However, enzymes, which are powerful catalysts used in biocatalysis, suffer from low stability when used for long-term operations in solution and a gradual decrease in activity during storage. In Continuous Flow Technology Microfluidic reactors are devices known for their smaller dimensions, large surface-to-volume ratios, and well-defined reaction times. Enzymes immobilized in such microfluidic reactors can exhibit distinct benefits, such as fast reaction rate, high storage stability, suppressed autolysis, and ease of use. The use of microfluidic immobilized enzyme reactors (μ-IMERs) offers several advantages over traditional technologies in performing biocatalytic reactions, such as low energy consumption, rapid heat exchange, fast mass transfer, high efficiency, and superior repeatability.

Continuous flow technology (flow chemistry) offers several advantages to peptide synthesis. Using Continuous Flow Chemistry, it is straightforward to pre-heat and preactivate the amino acid. This ensues fast, more efficient coupling cycles. This approach vastly increases the speed of each coupling cycle. Complete coupling and deprotection cycles of just 15 minutes are easily achieved. This efficient coupling also greatly reduces the need for excesses of reagent. This reduces the cost and amount of waste generated by the synthesis. Integration of inline real-time analysis, such as UV/ Vis spectroscopy and Variable Bed Flow Reactor into the flow after the reactor permit immediate identification of any nonstandard coupling events. This allows the user to recognise and optimise difficult coupling aevents during small scale syntheses. The peptide synthesis can then be scaled up using the optimised sequence.

In HPI product or preparation of APIs, handling of toxic and hazardous gases or chemicals is difficult. In Continuous Flow Technology, it is easy to handle hazardous and toxic chemicals and gases in continuous flow reactor in laboratory as well as industrial scale. For industrial scale, with respect to safety, Continuous Flow Technology is one of the good techniques for handling hazardous reactions such as – chlorination, fluorination, sulfonation Nitration, hydrogenation etc.