News Picture Generic

Development of a High-Throughput Kinetics Protocol and Application to an Aza-Michael Reaction

October 29, 2024

Organic Process Research & Development

High-throughput experimentation (HTE) has become integral to the pharmaceutical industry with most major pharmaceutical companies investing in automation and high-throughput screening technologies. Testing hundreds of reactions in parallel has distinct advantages; however, one clear disadvantage is that performing a reaction on micromolar scale is not always indicative of the reaction’s performance on multikilogram scale. Additionally, a great deal of information is lost by looking at a single time point. Valuable data around intermediates, over-reaction, catalyst induction periods, and so forth are invisible to a typical HTE workflow, which involves analyzing reactions at a single time point (e.g., 18 h). We envisioned a workflow in which time courses for each well of a high-throughput screen were collected. With this change in strategy, it could then become possible to complete high-throughput screening, select reaction conditions, gather kinetic information, and successfully build a kinetic model in less than 1 week. A kinetic model consisting of scale-independent parameters allows for virtual reaction optimization where the input concentrations, catalyst loading, and temperature can all be simulated and adjusted to understand their impact on yield or quality in a matter of seconds. A case study is presented with a transition metal salt/TMSCl-catalyzed aza-Michael reaction to showcase the performance and robustness of the high-throughput kinetic platform. A reaction progress kinetic analysis approach is utilized to quickly screen the rates of 48 catalyst/solvent combinations and create a mechanistic model. The first-principles kinetic model provides support for a proposed mechanism of dual activation by TMSCl.

For details

Development of a High-Throughput Kinetics Protocol and Application to an Aza-Michael Reaction

Xiao Li 1/2 and Anna L. Dunn 1

  1. Pharmaceutical Development, GlaxoSmithKline, Collegeville, Pennsylvania 19426, United States
  2. William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77004, United States

DOI: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.oprd.1c00213

For more information about the used Chemspeed solutions:

FLEX ISYNTH with online NMR

ISYNTH REACTSCREEN 

AUTOPLANT PRORES

Contact us to learn more about this exciting publication:

https://www.chemspeed.com/contact-us/

Other Recent News

Discover more news articles you might be interested in

Read more about Aqueous sonochemical synthesis of covalent organic frameworks
News Picture 1 1 V2
Mar
10

Aqueous sonochemical synthesis of covalent organic frameworks

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are versatile materials platforms for precise function integration owing to their high crystallinity, large surface areas, tunable characteristics and diverse and predictable structures. However, the dominant solvothermal method for COF synthesis requires harsh conditions, including high temperatures, toxic organic solvents, sealed and pressurized reactors, and extended reaction times that often exceed several days.

© Chemspeed Technologies 2026