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Made-in-Ontario Biotech Sector Gets Kick-Start At York University; Cutting-Edge R&D Draws Canadian Scientist From U.S. to Found York's Combinatorial Chemistry Facility
Just ask York University Chemistry Prof. Michael Organ, the founder and Director of York's Combinatorial Chemistry Facility who left his faculty position at The Purdue School of Science in Indiana in 1997 after hearing about exciting developments in Chemistry at York. Organ, a native of Millgrove, Ont. who earned his PhD at the University of Guelph before pursuing post-doctoral studies at Stanford University, said he was drawn back to Canada by York's success in promoting applied science and "incubating" companies on campus.
Organ said he was also heartened to learn about resuscitated government funding for scientific research and York's unique environment that facilitates the collaboration of academia and industry. Thanks to those developments, the new facility now employs 15 scientists and technicians. Some of York's Chemistry faculty are collaborating with pharmaceutical companies including Eli Lilly Canada Inc., Glaxo Wellcome Inc., Allelix Biopharmaceuticals Inc. and Dalton Chemical Laboratories Inc. Other faculty are working with precision scientific equipment manufacturers MDS SCIEX and Bruker Canada Ltd. All of these companies are founding partners of the Facility, and have pledged to broaden the university's expertise in combinatorial chemistry while expecting the unique research environment will lead to new marketable products for them.
"This is the only academic facility of its kind in Canada that operates at this capacity and it is one way of growing the biotech sector out of its branch-plant status," said Organ. "It's a public facility available to all academic and industrial scientists in Ontario and across Canada. This includes new companies and new divisions of existing larger companies," said Organ, noting that the spin-off companies now established at the facility are preparing single drug compounds and molecular libraries of compounds for individuals and companies who need customized synthesis.
Organ said three fledgling companies have already started inside the facility since it was unofficially opened in April of 1998, conducting both pure and applied research. "It's all about employing our professionals and our graduates by encouraging the development of good ideas and providing key seed money that enables us to build up the bio-tech sector in Ontario," said Organ, emphasizing that he is interested in placing only those companies in the facility that will engage in original and innovative research that can lead to new developments.
Funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund (ORDCF) has enabled the facility to purchase an estimated $2 million worth of scientific equipment that can also be used by other universities and fledgling bio-tech companies that simply can't afford the technology. "It's very difficult to acquire all these machines at once," said Organ, adding that Canadian researchers are playing catch-up in the field of combinatorial chemistry. A further $1 million has been awarded from ORDCF to fund newly created researching positions at York.
Organ, who just this month won one of the Premier's Research Excellence Awards for his work using catalytic methods in the parallel synthesis of drug compounds, said combinatorial chemistry -- also known as parallel synthesis -- and high through-put biological screening of drug candidates can speed up exponentially the process of discovering new drugs and other chemical substances. These techniques also have other peripheral applications in the industrial and manufacturing sectors including the development of new catalysts and materials. (For more information about combinatorial chemistry, please see attached Backgrounder)
York's chemistry department, through the pioneering work of Professor Clifford Leznoff, has a history of achievements in the field from its earliest origins, most recently recognized through Leznoff's receipt of the Alfred Bader Award. "The work of Professor Organ and the establishment of the Combinatorial Chemistry Facility at York advances this research, which is now of great interest to the biotech sector, and provides the basis for a more vital Canadian industry in years to come," said Robert Prince, Dean of the Faculty of Pure and Applied Science. The department, which is also recognized internationally for its work in atmospheric chemistry, has 1,600 Chemistry students, 216 of them majoring in Chemistry and 50 in graduate studies.
At the official opening of the facility, located on the first floor of the Chemistry and Computer Science Building, the public can watch the science at work in laboratories where robotic and computer-controlled equipment for preparing and analysing compounds are fully utilized. York University President Dr. Lorna Marsden will welcome guests, including leaders in the field of chemistry, both academic and industrial, from around the world who are participating in the annual meeting in Toronto of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, May 30-June 2 at the Harbour Castle Hilton.
The Open House on June 1, which runs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., will be centred around room 104 of the Chemistry and Computer Science Building (CCB)on the York Campus, 4700 Keele St. Free parking is available in the DD parking lot adjacent to the CCB.
For further information, please contact:
Professor Michael Organ
Susan Bigelow
The field of Combinatorial Chemistry, in which numerous compounds can be prepared simultaneously, is relatively new in terms of application. The combinatorial approach developed three decades ago in Princeton, New Jersey, by PhD chemist Joseph J. Hanak could not be fully exploited until computer-controlled robotics became commonplace in synthetic laboratories. (Chemical and Engineering News, March 8, 1999) Only ten years ago, a good medicinal chemist would make 50 to 100 drug compounds a year. Now, using the combinatorial approach, that same chemist can potentially prepare thousands of compounds a year using automation, which could substantially reduce the time it takes to develop a drug lead. It now takes 13 or so years from the time an initial discovery is made until a product hits the shelf during which time precious patent protection has elapsed.
York University Chemistry Professor Clifford Leznoff adapted the synthetic techniques used in liquid phase reactions to solid phase synthesis. Here, the substrate is supported on a polymer and modified as required and then removed from the polymer by a simple cleavage -- which has all but removed tedious reaction work-up and purification and reduced it to a simple filtration. Much of the combinatorial chemistry done around the world uses this solid-phase technique because of its simplicity and ability to be used in parallel reactions using automation. Leznoff, Organ and Ed Lee Ruff, the third founding member of the facility at York, all hold patents on methodology related to combinatorial synthesis.
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