Significant progress

Paradigm shifts in pharmaceutical research and production have a tendency to be abrupt. What just a few years ago seemed inconceivable is now no longer just a pipe dream in many areas. Among the prime movers behind this development are huge advances in computer simulation, nano technology research and biocatalysis – to name but a few examples.
One topical example worth mentioning is a project at Bayer Technology Services, where engineers took a computer simulation program intended originally for the simulation of chemical processes, upgraded it and adapted it to the requirements of pharmaceutical research. Thanks to this, researchers in pharmacokinetics at Bayer HealthCare are now able to follow the complicated path each drug takes through the human organism and so can establish how fast each substance is absorbed and then broken down again. Whereas information of this nature used to require highly sophisticated experiments, this new program, called PK-Sim, can produce the same results with the aid of a computer. Although no detailed experience is available as yet, Bayer’s Research Director Oels could imagine savings in drug development in the order of hundreds of millions. If the model is successful and can be made available to external customers as well, this will indeed represent a paradigm shift and with it immense savings in drug development costs.

No less rapid and remarkable has been the development of biocatalysis as a safe and efficient method for manufacturing essential enzymes and bacteria for the pharmaceutical industry. Degussa has been especially active in advancing this technology. And with great success too, for since the beginning of this year, the Degussa Service Center Biocatalysis has been able to offer both internal and external customers enzymes tailored to their precise needs. This would not have been possible without recent advances in genetic engineering. If the specific chemical reaction the customer wants catalysed is one for which the Service Center does not yet have suitable enzymes on hand, then it simply scans the world’s databases instead. After sifting through the search results, the DNA required is synthesized on the basis of the sequence stored in the computer, one advantage of this being that it can be tailored to the production organism desired right from the start.
Services like this show that both research- and production-based pharmaceutical companies have long begun venturing down new paths.

-Gerd Kielburger-