Chemical Process R&D for Pharmaceutical Industry in the New Millennium, Challenges and Opportunities

The genomic revolution has offered scientists in the world with unprecedented number of targets and opportunities to eradicate human diseases. High throughput screening technology using enzymatic and receptor binding assays has shifted the bottleneck in drug discovery to the laboratories of chemistry. Recent upsurge of interest in combinatorial chemistry is a testimony to the urgency of increasing the efficiency of how drug-like molecules are made. What the implication of all these on chemical process research? If the Internet has revolutionized the distribution and of data, information, and knowledge, how can this powerful tool be utilized to harness the collective intellect of chemists all across the world? If the effort of a few thousands people was able to send men to the moon, can the cross-pollination of ideas from chemists all over the world, each of them thinking in his or her unique way, produce the most cost effective way of making a particular molecule, reduce pollution of a current process, or deliver a cure for cancer? We will examine the brief history of modern organic chemistry and provide some personal musings on different course one can take in the area of chemical process R&D. ……