SAFC, the custom manufacturing and services business unit of Sigma-Aldrich Corp., will consolidate its global chiral chromatography screening and small-scale purification operations and locate them at its Pharmorphix Solid State Research Laboratories in Cambridge, UK. The Cambridge facility will now become the hub for SAFC’s chiral service offering which ranges from chiral gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) separations, to large-scale crystallization, simulated moving bed (SMB) separations and production of enantiomerically pure APIs. 
 
The consolidation of SAFC’s chiral services will provide customers with a single point of contact from the development stage through scale up. Paul Rodwell, a former senior principal scientist with Pfizer, has been appointed to lead SAFC’s chiral chromatography method development team. “SAFC offers a robust, cohesive range of chiral services that are applicable for a wide range of markets, from early stage drug discovery to route optimization and product development, through gram to multi kilo scale-up,” said Mr. Rodwell.
 
Analytical equipment from Sigma-Aldrich subsidiary Supelco Analytical in Bellefonte, PA, where the chiral screening service was previously performed, is currently being installed at the Cambridge site. The chiral screening operation will continue to support the analytical chiral column business and will draw upon Supelco’s analytical expertise to complement the solid-form characterization and research services at the Cambridge site. The new labs are expected to be validated and operational in July 2012.