University has led to the discovery of a novel class of benzodiazepines with
submicromolar activity against trypanosoma brucei spp., a parasitic species
that causes African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness in humans.
Dr. John Spencer, Reader in Medicinal Chemistry, said, "Rajendra Rathnam,
one of my PhD students at Greenwich, has successfully synthesized a number of
benzodiazepine containing amines by a variety of reduction methods from their
nitro precursors including microwave reductions with Molybdenum hexacarbonyl/DBU
or Tin (II) Chloride, but the H-Cube® flow method provided compounds in
approximately 5 minutes in high yields and without the need for work-up or column
chromatography. Such an approach is very promising for the generation of libraries
of bioactive molecules and can expedite drug discovery significantly."
The work was recently presented at the prestigious MedChem Europe 2009 Conference
in Berlin (organized by Select Biosciences).
"We are proud that our technology can play an important role in advancing
science," said Richard Jones, Director of Product Management at ThalesNano.
"From its introduction, H-Cube® has opened up vast new areas of chemistry
due to its advantages of speed, selectivity and yield."
ThalesNano is a world-leading provider of continuous process chemistry instruments
in the rapidly developing market of laboratory and process scale flow chemistry
reactors. The company has the widest portfolio of bench-top continuous process
chemistry instruments. Its R&D 100 award winning H-Cube® continuous-flow
hydrogenation reactor and the pilot plant scale version H-Cube Midi™ are
used in hundreds of laboratories in four continents and have become the new
industry standard for hydrogenation.