FTI Completes NIH-supported Fluorous Mixture Synthesis Research

April 26, 2004

Fluorous Technologies, Inc. announced today that its scientists have successfully completed a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project entitled "Solution Phase Libraries by Fluorous Mixture Synthesis." The two-year, one million dollar grant, which was funded by the Institute for General Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, allowed FTI to develop several new compound libraries to extend and commercialize its proprietary fluorous mixture synthesis technology, building on the successes achieved during a Phase I SBIR grant awarded in 2001.

"Fluorous mixture synthesis is a new solution-phase approach to the preparation of drug candidate compounds," said Dr. Philip Yeske, President and CEO of FTI. “Lead optimization in particular should benefit from the combined advantage of mixture synthesis efficiency and fluorous separation simplicity."

Dr. Wei Zhang, Director of Discovery Chemistry at FTI and Principal Investigator on the grant added, "Phase I research demonstrated the synthesis of natural product mappicine analogs, and Phase II focused on the design and development of small drug-like compound libraries with novel heterocyclic scaffolds. The combination of fluorous mixture synthesis with multi-component reactions and microwave technologies are additional features of this project. "

FTI is a Pittsburgh-based chemical technology company focused on the life sciences market. FTI’s products combine the flexibility and performance of solution-phase chemistry with facile separations comparable to solid-phase techniques. Fluorous-enhanced chemistry spans a wide range of applications, including drug discovery, combinatorial chemistry, catalysis, and peptide and oligonucleotide production. For more information, please visit www.fluorous.com.