The discovery of new pharmaceuticals continues to rely on the synthesis of tiny amounts of thousands of candidate molecules using unpredictable protocols that require highly trained specialists. Despite years of research, it remains expensive, time-consuming, unsafe, and environmentally unfriendly. Declining productivity, high costs, and safety issues, have driven a large amount of chemical synthesis to lower cost countries but this introduces uncertainty and delays in the already lengthy drug discovery process, where the flexibility to rapidly prepare new molecules in response to biological data is critical to success. In order to meet the unmet medical needs and relieve societal burdens, all elements of the drug discovery and development are focussed on adopting new processes and technologies to increase productivity and shorten the time to patients.
The ETH SpinOff company Synple Chem AG (Synple) was founded in 2016 with the aim of changing the way chemical synthesis is done, and supporting chemical research and development organisations by greatly simplifying the way in which key chemical scaffolds are produced. Through the development of an innovative, fully automated, bench-top, capsule-based machine that efficiently synthesises unique organic molecules at the touch of a button, Synple offers significant timesaving, productivity enhancing, and safety benefits. Synple’s first instrument employs single-use capsules for a range of chemical reactions for the preparation of important chemical products, including saturated N-heterocycles currently the most desired motif for medicinal chemists in drug discovery, and PROTACs one of the hottest trends in drug discovery. To expand and sell more capsules, Synple plans to continue developing additional applications for highly desirable chemistries, based on feedback from drug discovery chemists.
The objective of this project was to assess the technical and commercial feasibility of the technology. An additional goal of this study was to gain a deeper insight into the market size and dynamics in order to establish the steps required for commercial launch, including design and manufacture of a commercial product, defining the supply chain and pricing structure, and identifying the most appropriate sales, marketing and distribution channels.
