Date: 17th November 2018
Venue: SPPSPTM, SVKM's NMIMS
The Pharmaceutical Chemistry Section of Shobhaben Pratapbhai Patel School of Pharmacy & Technology Management, SVKM's NMIMS, Mumbai conducted a seminar on 'Flow Chemistry and its Applications' on 17th November 2018. This event was conducted in association with the Flow Chemistry Society-India Chapter. It was convened by Dr. Bala Prabhakar, Dr. Mayur Yergeri was the co-convener, and Dr. Harish Kundaikar and Dr. Amisha Vora were organizers for this seminar.
Speakers and Attendees:
The first speaker was Prof. Anil Kumar who is the Vice President of Flow Chemistry Society (India Chapter) and Professor Department of Chemistry at IIT Bombay. The second speaker was Mr. Vijay Kirpalani who is the President of Flow Chemistry Society (India Chapter) and CEO of Process Intensification Experts, LLP. This one day seminar was attended by 16 registered participants which included 5 faculty and 1 student from other colleges in Mumbai, and 6 faculty and 4 students of SPPSPTM.
Details:
The first speaker Prof. Anil Kumar delivered his lecture on 'Continuous Flow Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Industries'. He brought out an insightful lecture when he covered the basics of Flow Chemistry. He started his talk with the current methods used in the batch synthesis of pharmaceuticals and organic compounds and the advantages and disadvantages of batch synthesis and how continuous flow chemistry can help to overcome the disadvantages of batch chemistry by increasing specificity, selectivity, thus reducing wastage and increasing yields. He then put forth the need and significance of Flow Chemistry as a continuous manufacturing process. He also informed the audience as to how continuous Flow Chemistry can be used to study the time-scale based mechanisms of reactions which would be otherwise difficult to study by the batch processes. He went on to explain the applications of continuous Flow Chemistry in manufacturing of Pharmaceutical APis (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) and fine chemicals. He also explained as to how in his lab in IITB he had replaced all the day-to-day batch chemistry related glass apparatus and stirrers with a small sized machine which in his lab gives more output than all the batch chemistry apparatus together and at almost the same costs involved. The second speaker Mr. Vijay Kirpalani delivered his talk on his topic 'Flow Chemistry- R&D to Industrial Applications - Factory-of-the-Future'. His talk basically involved the instrumentations aspects of Flow Chemistry. In addition to his presentation he had also brought with him few portable Flow Chemistry equipments which are currently in use in the Pharma Industries. He explained and demonstrated Flow Chemistry with the help of these portable equipments and accessories, and few videos for practical applications. It was easy for the audience to correlate and link how Flow Chemistry is being used in actual practice.
Summary:
The lectures and demonstrations were delivered by the speakers from Flow Chemistry Society (India Chapter) with special emphasis on applications of Flow Chemistry in Pharmaceutical industries, synthesis of medicinal agents, instrumentation and scale-up of chemical reactions, and the development of new reactions and processes with increased specificity, yield and product quality.
Outcomes:
Overall the participants got themselves acquainted with this relatively new and less explored field of Flow Chemistry, its current state of utilization in Pharma Academia and Industry as well as gained future insights into how it could be utilized in Synthesis of APis/fine chemicals. The participants gave a good feedback for the seminar speakers and the overall organization of the seminar. In all, the one day seminar was conducted successfully.
Following are the few glimpses of the workshop:
Participants of the seminar on Flow Chemistry
Felicitation of Prof. Anil Kumar by Dr. Mayur Yergeri
Felicitation of Mr. Vijay Kirpalani by Dr. Amisha Vora
