Corporate Retrospective 2007: Chiral Technologies

Chiral Technologies, Inc. is the worldwide market leader of chiral chromatography products and services. Founded in 1990 with headquarters in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the company began with polysaccharide based chiral stationary phases invented by Professor Yoshio Okamoto of Nagoya University.

Since its inception, Chiral Technologies has developed a broad range of stereoselective media based upon chiral selectors produced by derivatization of amylose or cellulose polymers. We offer HPLC and SFC columns for analytical, semi-preparative and preparative separations. These columns and bulk chiral stationary phases are 'enabling technology' in the development and manufacture of optically active chiral drugs and agricultural chemicals.

During its inception, chiral chromatography was limited to analytical-scale characterization of chiral compounds in milligram quantities. Chiral Technologies, Inc. recognized that chromatography could be used as the basis of an economical production process for the quickest way to obtain pure enantiomers from racemic mixtures. This reduces the development time required for pharmaceutical companies to obtain test data on new discovery compounds.

The newest development is an immobilization technology that safely accommodates virtually any organic solvent as a mobile phase or mobile phase component. The ability to use an expanded range of solvents for mobile phase offers new possibilities for investigating novel conditions for obtaining separations that could not be achieved on solvent-restricted coated columns.

Pharmaceutical researchers use Chiral's products throughout the pharmaceutical development process—from discovery and early stage R&D, to the separation of single enantiomers required for process development and piloting, and in the commercial scale manufacturing processes.

Our custom separation services support early-stage clinical drug development from method development through isolation of gram-to-multi-kilogram quantities of enantiomers. Chiral Technologies' CSPs play a vital role in the commercial development and manufacture of single-enantiomer products.

With the growth of our company in terms of products, staff and revenues, we recently built a new Headquarters with a world-class Separations Center in West Chester, Pennsylvania that opened in Q3-2004. This new facility has state-of-the-art technical equipment to assist life science companies in the optimization of chromatographic separations.

Congratulations to LCGC on their 25th anniversary.

David Ellis

Chiral Technologies, Inc.

West Chester, Pennsylvania