The F in Future --- Chemical Market Reporter (PDF)
FOR YEARS, US and European fine chemical companies have watched in trepidation as Chinese and Indian challengers gradually worked their way up the value chain, but River Edge, N.J.-based Halocarbon Products' position as a manufacturer of specialty fluorocarbons seems to be quite secure – even to
the extent that sales into China and India are actually increasing.
Essential Tool - CHEManager Europe (PDF)
Fluorine has become an essential tool in drug discovery. Including fluorine atoms in potential medicines can have a variety of dramatic effects on the molecules’ properties, perhaps making them more selective, increasing their efficacy or making them easier to administer. A fifth of all drugs on the market contain at least one fluorine substituent. Three of the current top 10 best sellers contain fluorine atoms, including the biggest blockbuster medicine, Pfizer’s lipid lowering agent Lipitor (atorvastatin), which has an aromatic fluorine substituent. TAP’s proton pump inhibitor Prevacid (lansoprazole) includes a difluoromethylene unit. The fluticasone component of GlaxoSmithKline’s anti-asthma combination product Seretide has three separate fluorine substituents.
Bench Scale to Large Scale - Manufacturing Chemist (PDF)
If you are of a certain persuasion, Augusta, Georgia, can only mean one thing – golf, and the US Masters. However, the Augusta Golf Club is so exclusive that there isn’t even a waiting list, it is strictly ‘by invitation’ only. So it was straight down to the purpose of the visit: to see Halocarbon Products’ 100-acre expanded manufacturing facility in North Augusta, located just across the State border, on the other side of the Savannah river, in South Carolina.
Fluorine Brings New Drugs to Fruition - Manufacturing Chemist (PDF)
Nature makes huge numbers of chemically diverse complex molecules, many of which have biological activity. Bacteria in particular are a rich source of medicinally useful compounds, as they biosynthesise a whole host of chemicals that have an effect in the human body, or kill the organisms that infect it. However, very few of the active organic compounds created by bacteria contain fluorine atoms, even though around a fifth of all pharmaceutical products on the market contain at least one fluorine moiety.
Fluorine 101
What do many of the high-technology products that we almost take for granted like chemically stable polymers, pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals with enhanced activity, next-generation photo resists and long-life elastomers have in common? In many cases, you’ll find fluorine in them. Why did this once-exotic, highly reactive element become so important?
Fluorine - A Vital Element in the Medicine Chest (PDF)
A huge number of the drugs that we rely on today were provided by nature – either directly or by giving a starting point for medicinal chemists to work with. Whether made by bacteria, fungi or plants, the range of structurally diverse and biologically active molecules that are made by natural organisms is enormous. Penicillin? From the mould Penicillium notatum. Taxol? From the Pacific yew tree Taxus brevifolia. Erythromycin? Made by the bacterium Streptomyces erythreus. These are just three examples of hugely important medicines that nature invented – and which provided the inspiration for further medicines to be created by chemists.