Enablement of Photochemistry Processes Through Technology and Cross Functional Teams

The demands for bringing commercially viable processes to the market have become more difficult in recent years, with ever increasing emphasis on sustainability, cost, and time to market. In the pharmaceutical space, molecules have become more complex, timelines are continuously compressed, and purity requirements continue to tighten. Overcoming these challenges requires both the development and application of new chemical processing technologies and the efforts of not only chemists and chemical engineers, but also mechanical, automation, and software engineers. In this talk, I’ll review some of the ways in which Snapdragon has approached these grand challenges by leveraging automation and advanced manufacturing technologies to facilitate early phase GMP deliveries of complex molecules with a case study focus on photochemistry process and photoreactor design.

While photochemistry offers chemists unique ways to make molecules without requiring high thermal inputs, deployment of commercial photoreactor processes has remained rare due to their complexity to build and operate. Design of a photochemistry process requires a detailed understanding of photophysics and reaction kinetics, and photoreactor design requires input from a broad array of scientists and engineers to ensure that hazards associated with high voltage systems and high intensity light are mitigated while tightly controlling light irradiance, temperature of the process fluid, and temperature of the light source. I’ll review the history of development of photochemistry reactor technology at Snapdragon, how we have approached and overcome these operational challenges to build a 5 kW photochemical reactor platform, and provide case studies where the technology has been successfully deployed and proven transformational.