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About 300,000 used and refurbished lab instruments - worth almost $1 billion - were sold all over the world in 2009 as start-ups and biotech firms furnish their laboratories with these cheaply-obtained instruments. As pharmaceutical companies enforce lab closures and layoffs, the supply of used lab instruments grow. How instrumentation companies respond to this trend is discussed.

Pharmaceutical industries efforts at reducing harmful contaminants in medications are discussed. Genotoxic impurities damage DNA and potentially cause cancer. Regulators around the world have issued guidelines on the prevention of potential genotoxic impurities in drugs.

Initiatives to train and employ a workforce that is highly skilled in nanotechnology, such as the offering of related courses in universities, are described. This motivation comes at a time when the field of nanotechnology undergoes an evolution. How the economic downturn has affected these initiatives is discussed.

Blockbuster chemotherapy platinum drugs such as cisplatin and carboplatin have their shortcomings, and now drug firms are trying to develop new platinum drugs that address these shortcomings. The progress of different drug companies in this direction are discussed.

Drug companies are trying to develop insulin that can be taken orally. India's Biocon is furthest in this field with their IN-105 insulin molecule that can be put in a tablet. The methods that drug makers use to develop oral insulin are discussed.

Solubility and permeability of molecules are important issues in pharmaceutical development since even the best molecule can fail as a drug if it does not have these properties. The steps that the pharmaceutical industry are taking to ensure solubility and permeability in their drugs that they are developing are discussed.

A ranking of analytical and life sciences instrumentation companies based on company results is presented. The top spot goes to Life technologies whose sales topped $2.4 billion in 20009 followed by Thermo Fisher Scientific with $2.1 billion.

Genome editing technology firm Sangamo BioSciences intends to expand the usefulness of zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) to applications such as therapeutics, drug production, agriculture, and basic research. ZFPs are proteins that identify and connect to DNA-pair base sequences allowing gene modification. Strategies that have been done by Sangamo to pursue the plan are discussed.

Pharmaceutical chemical suppliers are taking over plants formerly owned by pharmaceutical companies and are transforming them into custom manufacturing facilities. Details on plants undergoing renovations are presented.

Custom chemical contract manufacturers, such as biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms, are working on new strategies to boost activities in 2010 after the sector saw a decline in the number of early-stage projects in 2009. Activities of several companies in various custom chemical markets are presented.

The chemical industry is expected to see improvements in free cash flow and credit quality in 2010, but related construction is expected to continue to struggle. Chemical industry forecasts on the inorganics, fine chemicals and specialty chemicals market, crop protection, pharmaceuticals, and laboratory instrumentation are discussed.

Vaccine immunization offers the best means to prevent H1N1 infections. An effective vaccine has been made against the H1N1 virus but the worldwide capacity is pegged at 1 billion to 2 billion doses per year and only a fraction will be ready when the flu pandemic peaks. The various efforts being made by drug makers to produce vaccines against the H1N1 virus are discussed.

The efforts being made by drug companies and governments to control and prevent the H1N1 virus are discussed. It is predicted that as many as 2 billion people or around 30 percent of the world's population could be infected in two years. Antivirals can be used for treatment and prophylaxis.

The nanotechnology sector is seeing advancement in instruments as with the emergence of high-precision atomic force microscopes (AFMs), scanning tunneling microscopes and electron miscropes. Innovations in e-beam lithography and dip-pen nanolithography and details on companies' research and development initiatives for nanotech instruments are discussed.

Universities and colleges are participating in research that range from industry-sponsored to single-investigator projects to provide their students with the knowledge and experience that will give them an edge in the job market. Drug companies are also working with these schools to train students with the skills that they would also require from new hires.

Green chemistry benefits the pharmaceutical industry and fine chemical makers by generating less waste and emissions, minimizing material and energy use, as well as cutting process development costs. These industries can use the Fast Lifecycle Assessment of Synthetic Chemistry tool and other metrics to help them apply the principles of green chemistry.

Small chemical firms in the United States are producing chemicals from renewable resources. The world market for biobased feedstocks has grown to $1.6 billion in 2008. Small firms typically limit themselves to demonstration plants to fine-tune their processes.

Custom chemical firms serving the pharmaceutical industry are improving their capabilities ranging from chemical discovery to commercialization. These companies hope that this business model would safeguard them by diversifying their operations, as well as addressing all their customers' needs.

Manufacturers of custom chemicals are coping with the slowdown in the US economy and benefiting from continued sales to pharmaceutical companies. Drug companies are also outsourcing more drug research and manufacturing functions, increasing business for chemical manufacturers.

Ongoing research and development has brought many new drugs into the market to control HIV. Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) recently approved may help by inhibiting reverse transcriptase and helping to control progress of the condition.

Scientists are examining a new path for developing HIV vaccines by studying the reasons that some infected individuals remain 'elite controllers' or 'long-term non-progressors'. This will help determine how immune cells of these individuals control the virus.

A large number of small-molecule drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration contain a chiral center. The combined efforts of chemical companies and academic groups to discover new chiral ligand structures are discussed.

The research report on the developmental progress on an antibody drug conjugate (ADC) delivery route to avoid nasty systemic side effects associated with chemotherapy is presented. The ADC coupling is new innovative technique in which potent cytotoxic agent are modified and delivered by binding selectively to receptors on the target cell instead of killing everything in its path.

A new survey results conducted by the industry group Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America which include targeted drugs, potent chemotherapies, and highly potent cell-killing or cytotoxic agents conjugated to delivery molecules is reviewed. The commercialization of late Phase II clinical trials to test drug efficacy have increased the sale of small-molecule cytostatic drugs such as tyrosine and aurora kinase inhibitors, which stop cancer, cells from multiplying.

MannKind, a pharmaceutical company remains committed to research and development for inhaled insulin despite the setbacks suffered by other pharmaceutical companies.

The strategy adopted by BASF Venture Capital to help small companies with nanotechnology know how to move further with research and development is discussed.

The fine chemical manufacturing industry maintains a positive growth outlook though the U.S. Presidential elections, global economy and inflation could have an impact on business.

The construction of chemical production plants and setting up of R & D centers in China, India and the Pacific Rim by western companies is evidence of the business potential and infrastructure available in the region. Or Western companies are looking towards China, India and Pacific Rim countries to set up chemical production plants and R & D centers to capitalize on business potential and increase their market share in the region.

Venture capital investors are putting money into the biotech industry to enable them to start up drug firms to continue to push their discoveries through the pipeline.

The field of asymmetric synthesis is expanding rapidly with scientists relying on using chiral technologies like asymmetric synthesis, chiral auxiliaries for making pharmaceuticals compounds in bulk. These are preferred by the researchers form several pharma companies for large scale production of drugs.

Pharmaceutical companies are using specialized outside providers to find crystalline forms with the right properties. The solid forms of drugs and their determination and control is a growing area of science and business.

The choice of pharmaceutical crystalline form can be used to enhance drug properties, polymorphs and cocrystals can be reengineered or designed anew and can help enhance drug properties.

The development of nanobiotechnology research centers is a multidimensional program involving infrastructure development, development of techniques and research program and bringing together the industry, academia and government. Since 2001, the U.S. government agencies in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) have funded more than 60 facilities, centers, and networks linking existing facilities and activities across the university campuses.

The custom chemical manufacturing industry is facing a continued period of instability from its pharmaceutical customers, which has created an unprofitable scenario. This has resulted in low productivity from assets, high competition for new business and depressed profits.

Metathesis, which is commercially available, is on the verge of entering commercial pharmaceutical manufacturing. It is found that pharmaceutical chemists at most of the major drug companies are using these catalysts in lab-scale syntheses.

Fine chemicals industry in Europe and the US are facing stiff competition from Asian companies. However, despite stiff competition, change of assets and declining number of players, the fine chemicals industry has survived and outsourcing by pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies has given the industry a new lease of life.

Treatment for addictions centered on psychological or behavioral therapy for decades, but improved understanding of the neurologic and physiologic aspects of addiction is resulting in the emergence of more medication-based treatments, along with a gradually expanding willingness to treat them. Researchers working in the field, as well as pharmaceutical companies developing and marketing the medications, believe the growth in medications for smoking cessation, and opioid and alcohol abuse may herald a new phase in addiction pharmacotherapy.

Scientists at pharmaceutical companies have examined 128 syntheses and they found that as many as half of the drug compounds made by their process R&D groups were not only chiral but also contained an average of two chiral centers each. Enzymes are end products and processing aids in many industries and are used to make bulk food ingredients and specialty chemicals.

Fluorinated building blocks are increasingly used as the basis of valuable active molecules and represent a class of high-value compounds. Saltigo's custom manufacturing unit has a range of large-scale fluorine chemistry capabilities, and its fluorine team offers custom research services for organofluorine compounds as it has direct access to more than 4,000 fluorinated building blocks and procedures for synthesizing more than 24,000 fluoroorganic compounds.

Fluorine is highly advantageous in pharmaceutical and agrochemical compounds, including fluorine in drug molecules brings benefits, but getting it into a molecule easily, selectively and safely presents synthetic challenges. Two major approaches were developed, the one is to introduce fluorine or a fluorinated moiety at an appropriate stage during synthesis, while the other starts with a fluorine-containing building block as the basis for further conversions.

Nanotechnology might offer gains in the energy, medical and environmental fields but nanoparticles present a large exposure risk. It is important to understand the long-term health and environmental effects rather than having companies and governments investing multi-billion-dollars to learn later that the products or technology are either hazardous or simply unacceptable.

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) produced under good manufacturing practices (GMP) address consistent product quality by ensuring an API's composition and purity, and the European producers have sought to level the competition by curtailing the use of low-priced APIs not produced under GMP. The European Union (EU) has issued a directive that as of October 30, 2005, all APIs going into drugs sold in Europe must be from GMP-compliant sources and the EU member countries are implementing this directive

The future of custom chemicals business is shaped not only by the traditional powers in the West but also by emerging companies in the East. European. The US fine chemicals producers are fighting to get a foothold in Asia by putting assets there or tapping into low-cost supplies, while in the meantime, Indian producers of advanced intermediates and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) have created global stances by acquiring foreign operations.

Spraying insecticides and creating bed nets could go far in controlling the mosquito vectors and reducing disease transmission, but vaccines are considered to be a long-term solution to prevent infection and disease. Hence, several key organizations are helping to coordinate and support much of the research that is involved in creating a new and improved vaccine for Malaria.

World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that malaria is estimated to kill more than 1 million people annually and possibly as many as 3 million, with most of the deaths among children under age six living in sub-Saharan Africa. Local, regional and international efforts are mobilized to support the development and implementation of preventive measures, such as environmental cleanup, insecticide spraying, treated bed nets, and immunizations and treatment, including diagnostics and medicines.

Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) is becoming very important in preparative-scale separations of enantiomers while producing chiral pharmaceuticals. The benefits of using SFCs with chiral stationary phases (CSPs) are discussed.

The recent progress in chiral chemistry is overshadowing the growing importance of catalyst design to accomplish a range of symmetric reactions. The asymmetric catalysis must be competitive against alternative methods for producing a chiral target that is cost-effective and environmental friendly.

High-throughput experimentation and parallel approaches for exploring synthetic routes and optimizing safe and cost-effective reaction conditions are gaining favor among some process chemists. Parallel reactor equipment such as multivessel stir-plate carousels, to very sophisticated high-throughput systems available to the process chemists offer them the benefits of higher productivity, wider coverage of experimental space, increased information, and unanticipated insights into the chemistry taking place.

The guidance document supporting process analytical technology (PAT) released by the US Food & Drug Administration department is part of a broader initiative on current Good Manufacturing Practices to be followed by the pharmaceutical industry. The agency says that the goal of the PAT, which involves on-line, in-line, or at-line measurements at critical processing points for feedback and quality control, is to design and develop processes that ensure quality products.

Microreactor technology, which offers the advantage of continuous processing based on flow chemistry, employs a system of often miniaturized reactors, mixers, heat exchangers, and other processing elements with internal structures on a micrometer scale. Researchers in industry, academia, and at microtechnology R&D centers believe that such a technology would open doors to more efficient and novel chemistry useful for fine chemicals and intermediates.