The Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (socma) will sponsor the Informex 2002 fine and custom chemicals manufacturing trade show at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, La., Feb. 26 through Mar. 1. More than 450 exhibiting companies and over 4000 attendees are expected to be on hand for the session.

The soaring pace of discovery in the pharmaceutical, life sciences and personal care industries has sparked an upsurge in demand for specialized reagents and contract chemical manufacturing services. Informex is traditionally the premier venue in North America for networking with vendors who offer these custom products and services. Busy professionals are also likely to benefit from workshops this year on such topics as responsible care, enabling technologies, new product development and cGMP (current good manufacturing practices), plus a newly added purchasing forum. Below, we bring you a sampler of some of the exhibits that will be featured at the show.

Among the new products to be featured is a high-purity, high-quality grade of 4-fluorobenzaldehyde, an intermediate used in the manufacture of pharmaceutical and agricultural ingredients. A new line of bromine esters, also used as pharmaceutical intermediates, will also be on display. The exhibit will also describe the capabilities of the recently established Albemarle Fine Chemistry Services division, which focuses on manufacture of custom fine chemicals and provides chemical research services for the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries. Facilities at the division offer small-volume, value-added chemicals and versatile cGMP capacity.

Bayer's Basic and Fine Chemicals Business Group will highlight the capabilities of two of its custom chemical manufacturing plants in Europe. The Novochem plant, located in Murcia, Spain, produces launch and commercial-scale quantities of advanced intermediates and APIs under cGMP. The unit can meet size requirements from 20 kg to multi-ton. The ZeTO central organic pilot plant, located in Leverkusen, Germany, offers advanced technology, process development and chemical engineering in a cGMP environment. The staff and plant focus on high-end chemistry and products requiring significant technical supervision.

The company will showcase two new service business units—Dow Pharmaceutical Services and Dow Custom Processing—which are part of a larger sector, Custom and Fine Chemicals, formed in the summer of 2001. Custom and Fine Chemicals consolidates the resources and technologies of recent acquisitions into a global business unit that unites the former Dow Contract Manufacturing Services business with angus Chemical and the operating companies of Ascot Plc (Chirotech, Haltermann Custom Processing, Haltermann Products and Mitchell Cotts). The two new contract development and manufacturing service units will target pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, specialty and fine chemical markets.

Emphasis will be on the recently launched Purox S, said to be the first sodium benzoate food preservative to guarantee 99.9% product purity. Other reported benefits include excellent taste and odor profile and easy flow control. A new fluid-bed granulation process for producing the product yields almost perfectly round particles with a narrow particle size distribution, resulting in low dust content and optimal dissolution. Also on display will be another new sodium benzoate product, Purox B. Available in the form of flakes, Purox B is made by a melt crystallization process that ensures low impurity and odor levels.

The Custom and Fine Chemicals business will focus on its new BoPhoz shelf-stable chiral ligands for asymmetric catalysis. With the BoPhoz products, preparation of amino acid derivatives by asymmetric hydrogenation is said to proceed with excellent (more than 98%) enantioselectivities. The ligands are designed to be cost-effective. They also show an unusual degree of shelf stability at ambient temperatures in the open air. BoPhoz ligands are believed to be some of the most selective known ligands for the asymmetric hydrogenation of dehydroamino acid derivatives. Additional applications of these ligands are under development.

The enhanced organic specialties production capabilities at the firm's newly operational 14,000 sq ft facility will be featured. The unit contains work stations dedicated to liquid ammonia chemistries and employs new synthetic methods using anhydrous lithium perchlorate. The facility can produce up to multi-ton quantities of specialty organics. Also spotlighted will be the new 2002-2003 catalog, including listings for more than 500 new products, plus access to more acetylenic and olefinic intermediates and more core organics. Another feature will be the first issue of a publication series, the Practical use of Anydrous Lithium Perchlorate and Magnesium Perchlorate in Organic Synthesis.

The company will illustrate the advantages of its Wiped Film Drying technology for the continuous drying of thermally sensitive solids from a dilute solution to a free-flowing powder in a closed system. The system is based on thin-film drying, coupled with modifications that allow the handling of slurries, pastes, filter cakes and wet powders. Residence times in the Wiped Film Dryer are less than one minute. Drying in the unit is typically done under reduced pressure to lower thermal stresses on materials. A pilot plant using the system is operating in Batavia, Ill. and can provide quantitative scale-ups.

The company will feature two new products at its exhibit. The first, lysine triisocyanate, is said to offer exceptionally low viscosity and vapor pressure and high isocyanate content when compared to other isocyanates. It is recommended for use in high-performance polyurethanes, biodegradable foams, coatings, adhesives and elastomers, as well as in tissue engineering materials. The second product, an all-natural cysteine, is being offered by Kyowa's Biochemical Group under an exclusive license from Wacker Biochem. Made by fermentation from vegetable and inorganic materials, the new cysteine grade does not use human and animal sources. Other reported advantages are high purity, reliable supply, processing efficiency and environmental compatibility.

The company will show what it describes as a unique line of protected amino acids for the synthetic production of peptides. The new products, named Bsmoc, are made in conjunction with Polycarbon Industries and were developed by Louis Carpino of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who also invented the widely used T-boc and Fmoc chemistries. With the Bsmoc reagents, deprotection can be carried out with a 2-5% secondary amine, as opposed to the typical 20% required with other systems. Another new product on exhibit will be the Dmcp chiral asymmetric enantioselective protecting agent. The Dmcp can more advantageously replace trityl groups in side-chain protection. It can also be employed as a C-terminal amide agent, where it can be removed from the resin under extremely mild conditions (only 1% trifluoroacetic acid). Like the Bsmoc technology, Dr. Carpino invented Dmcp.

The Sigma-Aldrich Fine Chemicals division will highlight its expertise and capabilities in air-sensitive organometallic compounds and in phosgenation reactions. The division recently scaled up manufacturing of the air-sensitive compounds at its large-scale Sheboygan Falls, Wisc.-plant. Many of these boron-containing reagents, including selective reducing agents and boronic acids, are now manufactured in multi-hundred lb to multi-ton quantities. The Fine Chemicals unit has also scaled up its phosgenation capacity at the Sheboygan Falls facility from 25 gal to 2,000 gal. Phosgenations entail severe safety and toxicity hazards and few manufacturers have the resources to carry out these reactions on a large scale. The Sheboygan Falls plant contains glass-lined reactors, and reliable phosgene delivery, detection and destruction equipment, allowing it to make products using phosgenation chemistries in up to multi-ton quantities.