Optimisation and Scale-up of Reactions using Microwave Technology
Dr. Hansjoerg Lehmann, Labhead, Discovery Technologies/Preparation Laboratories, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Basel, Switzerland

Microwave-assisted organic synthesis has received strong exposure over the last decade and proved to be ideal for small scale applications in the lead optimization phase of drug development, mainly due to the incredibly short reactions times required and the ease of adapting such a technology to high level process automation. The successful application in small-scale organic synthesis, in particular for the rapid optimization of reaction conditions has lead to a widespread use of microwave reactors in research labs at Novartis and in the context of the drug discovery process there is an increasing pressure to use this technology on larger scale in our kilolab. Nevertheless, to date published examples of scale-up experiments are rare, in particular those involving complex organic reactions. This is coupled with the fact that only a few companies are currently developing microwave devices for scale-up.