Abstract:
The past ten years have seen the exponential growth of reactions promoted by visible and UV light. This has led to the discovery of very useful and highly selective transformations that were not feasible without the use of photons. Due to the unique advantages of these reactions, we foresee an increasing use of photochemistry in the synthesis and production of API. Scaling-up these reactions remains a key challenge. As most photochemical reactions require a high surface area to volume ratio for good efficiency, the utilization of these transformations on large scale is most amenable to flow. Our discussion will highlight the key parameters that need to be taken into account for an effective transition from the lab scale to preparative scale, namely geometry of the reactor, light source, photon density, path length, and residence time. Ongoing efforts by the flow chemistry team at Merck & Co., Inc. toward developing scalable photochemical reactions in flow and their application in specific case studies will be presented.
Speaker Bio:
John leads the Flow, Automation, High-Pressure, and Prep labs within the Process Chemistry & Enabling Technologies group at Merck & Co., Inc. The New Jersey based flow team works closely with the larger process organization to implement flow chemistry processes during late stage and commercial route development.
John began his industrial career at i2Chem a Cambridge (MA) based CRO that specialized in flow chemistry process development before moving to Merck in 2012. John received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010 where he completed his research under the direction of Stephen Buchwald. During his time at MIT he was introduced to flow chemistry through the MIT-Novartis Center for Continuous Manufacturing. He holds a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Victoria in Canada.