Degussa Homogeneous Catalysts Launches catMETium® Catalysts for Metathesis Reactions in Pharmaceutical Applications
20 June 2006
Degussa Homogeneous Catalysts (DHC), an internal start-up of Degussa AG, Düsseldorf, brings to the market a high performance metathesis catalyst for applications in the pharmaceutical market with a straight forward business model.
DHC markets the metathesis catalyst under the trade name catMETium IMesPCy, which is an alkylidene ruthenium complex with a N-heterocyclic carbene ligand. To market this technology DHC has taken licences under patents generated by Prof. Wolfgang A. Herrmann et al, Technische Universität München in Germany and field of use licences under patents generated by Prof. Steven P. Nolan et al, University of New Orleans, USA.
catMETium IMesPCy is known for its high performance in cross-metathesis, ring-closing and ring-opening metathesis. There is strong demand for these powerful reactions to create solutions to synthetic challenges in the pharmaceutical market.
"DHC's mission is to make homogeneous catalysts available and user friendly," explains Dr. Jürgen Krauter, Marketing and Sales Manager at DHC, "We believe in the value for our customers having access to state-of-the-art catalyst technology. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2005 highlighted the great importance of metathesis as a powerful catalytic technology for chemical synthesis."
DHC's business model for IP compensation is to provide an all-inclusive kilo price with no additional commitments.
The fundamental basis for DHC is to be a full service homogeneous catalyst supplier providing a portfolio for the challenging applications in the pharmaceutical market. The addition of metathesis catalysts expands DHC's capabilities of asymmetric hydrogenation and CX-coupling. This portfolio is combined with highly capable screening services and commercial manufacturing and positions DHC as a strong partner for catalytic solutions.
For research purposes samples of the new metathesis catalyst catMETium IMesPCy can be obtained from Strem Chemicals (Newburyport, Massachusetts). DHC has scaled up catMETium IMesPCy and offers it directly in commercial quantities for pharmaceutical applications.
