Meeting The Challenge Of Rising API Complexity: Lonza IP- And Reaxys AI-Enabled Route Design Technology

The complexity of small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) is rising, bringing longer syntheses that challenge innovators' timely readiness for the clinic.¹ Longer synthetic pathways make it more difficult for process chemists to achieve the ideals of a good API manufacturing process.² They also create more complex raw material and intermediate supply chains. Together, these factors can negatively impact startup times and extend preclinical development timelines.

Pharmaceutical innovators and cheminformatics technology companies have developed computer-aided synthesis design technologies (CSDTs), to mitigate the impact of rising complexity. CSDTs, given a molecule target, compute the shortest and highest-probability-of-success retrosynthetic path to accessible starting materials. Here, we discuss the award-winning AI and vast data that propel a leading predictive retrosynthesis technology. We discuss how Lonza Small Molecules, by leveraging its development and manufacturing IP in this leading CSDT, tailored its performance to suit the needs of our process chemists in Preclinical Route Design. We discuss our observations of the impact on synthetic route brevity, on supply chain strategy and, ultimately, on route selection. Lonza subject matter experts, equipped with this custom enabling technology, are helping our partners mitigate API complexity and accelerate IND readiness - as part of our Lonza Route Scouting Service.

1. Eastgate, M.D.; Schmidt, M.A.; Fandrick, K.R. On the design of complex drug candidate syntheses in the pharmaceutical industry. Nat. Rev. Chem. 2017, 1, 1-16.
2. Dach, R.; Song, J.J.; Roschangar, F.; Samstag, W.; Senanayake, C.H. Eight criteria defining a good chemical manufacturing process. Org. Process. Res. Dev. 2012, 16, 1697−1706.