Sterling Pharma Solutions, a global contract development and manufacturing organization, has appointed professor Ian R. Baxendale to lead a team at its site in Dudley, UK, to research and demonstrate the application of flow chemistry within the company, and to offer the technology to customers within its innovator API manufacturing services portfolio.
 
Baxendale is currently chair of Synthetic Chemistry within the Department of Chemistry at Durham University. His appointment is a three-year secondment to Sterling, and has been funded by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation.
 
“We are delighted to welcome Ian to Sterling, as he brings unparalleled experience within the areas of innovative manufacturing techniques and technologies which will enable us to establish a world-class flow chemistry facility and research team,” commented Mark Muldowney, head of Technology & Innovation at Sterling. “Flow chemistry is an area that more customers are exploring to increase the efficiency and scope of pharmaceutical manufacturing, and Ian’s appointment marks an important step in securing the necessary expertise to broaden Sterling’s service offering in this field.”
 
Baxendale added, “Flow chemistry is still an under-represented manufacturing technology within the pharmaceutical industry and as such, I am excited to be working with the great team of chemists and engineers at Sterling to leverage their commercial manufacturing skills to demonstrate its process improvement capabilities, at scale, on a wide range of synthetically challenging applications. I would really like to thank Innovate UK for its support and funding of this opportunity.”
 
Experience
 
Baxendale has over 20 years of academic and industrial experience within organic synthesis, having obtained a bachelor’s and doctorate degree in chemistry from Leicester University, UK, before moving to a postdoctoral position with professor Steven Ley at the University of Cambridge.
 
While at Cambridge, he co-founded and was director of the Innovative Technology Centre with Ley, as a center of excellence for the study and development of advanced chemical synthesis tools and methodologies, and was dean of Sidney Sussex College for five years. In 2012, he moved to Durham University to take up the chair of Synthetic Chemistry as a fully tenured professor.
 
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