Argonaut Inks Product Development Agreements With Five Pharmaceutical Companies; New Company Developing Tools for Medicinal Chemistry Automation.SAN CARLOS San Carlos (săn kär`lōs), residential city (1990 pop. 26,167), San Mateo co., W Calif.; inc. 1925. The chief manufactures are plastic products, hardware, and machine parts. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 1995--Argonaut Technologies, Inc. a privately held developer of instrumentation and consumable A material that is used up and needs continuous replenishment, such as paper and toner. "The low-tech end of the high-tech field!" products for automating medicinal chemistry Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacology involved with designing, synthesizing and developing pharmaceutical drugs. , today announced that it has signed product development agreements with Amgen, Inc., Berlex Biosciences, Inc., Merck & Co. Inc., Pharmacopeia pharmacopeia /phar·ma·co·pe·ia/ (-ko-pe´ah) an authoritative treatise on drugs and their preparations. See also USP. pharmacopei´al United States Pharmacopeia see under U. , Inc., and SmithKline Beecham to produce instrumentation and consumable products for solid-phase chemistry. "The agreements highlight the commitment of Argonaut and its pharmaceutical partners to increase the productivity and decrease the cost of drug discovery through the development of tools for automated chemistry," said Joel Martin, Ph.D., Argonaut's president and chief executive. "Each of Argonaut's partners is at the forefront of developments in automated chemistry. We are fortunate to work with these industry leaders in developing the next generation of instruments and reagents for solid phase organic synthesis Organic synthesis is the construction of organic molecules via chemical processes. Organic molecules can often contain a higher level of complexity compared to purely inorganic compounds, so the synthesis of organic compounds has developed into one of the most important aspects of ." "Our collaboration with Argonaut allows us to provide input on the features and specifications of products we need, while keeping us abreast of the changing technology of synthesis instrumentation," said Thomas Salzmann, Ph.D., vice president, chemistry, Merck Research Laboratories. Argonaut's collaborators will form the basis of focus groups for the development and evaluation of Argonaut's products. The collaborators will receive prototype instruments for solid phase organic synthesis later this year and commercial versions of those instruments in 1996. In return for an undisclosed financial commitment, the collaborating companies receive guaranteed priority in Argonaut's manufacturing queue. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Paul D. Hoeprich, Jr., Ph.D., Argonaut's vice president of science and technology, "These collaborations are invaluable in designing products that fulfill our customers' needs. We are determined to build products to our customers' requirements rather than to some `blue sky' technological ideal." "We look forward to working closely with Argonaut, whose solid phase technology should provide great synergy with our own efforts in combinatorial chemistry Combinatorial chemistry involves the rapid synthesis or the computer simulation of a large number of different but structurally related molecules. Introduction Synthesis of molecules in a combinatorial fashion can quickly lead to large numbers of molecules. , particularly for the optimization of compound libraries and the resynthesis of active compounds," said John Chabala, Ph.D. president of Pharmacopeia, Inc. Argonaut is developing instruments and chemical products to facilitate the simultaneous synthesis of multiple organic molecules. Argonaut's products are "chemical power tools" that take advantage of new technology to automate heretofore manual processes such as mixing, heating and cooling, and addition of chemicals. The company's products marry advances in fluid delivery, materials science materials science Study of the properties of solid materials and how those properties are determined by the material's composition and structure, both macroscopic and microscopic. , machining and computers with the science of solid phase chemistry. Solid phase chemistry and the related technology of combinatorial chemistry are hotly hot·ly adv. In an intense or fiery way: a hotly contested will. Adv. 1. hotly - in a heated manner; "`To say I am behind the strike is so much nonsense,' declared Mr Harvey heatedly"; "the pursued areas of research within the pharmaceutical industry because they enable the parallel synthesis and subsequent purification of large numbers of chemical compounds. CONTACT: Argonaut Technologies, Inc. Joel F. Martin Ph.D., 415/598-1350 or J. Kureczka Associates Joan E. Kureczka, 415/821-2413 |
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