Academics

Contract research for academics, for publich research institutes – isn’t this a contradiction in terms?

It is not! Not only profit organisations strive to increase efficiency by focussing onto their very core business. This also applies to non-profit research groups. One answer to meet the rising competition, the need to deliver sound/profund results within shorter time frames and with limited financial as well as manpower ressources, is specializing. This, in turn, means to co-laborate even stronger with complementary research groups as well as with commercial suppliers of services, devices or reagents.

Researchers of non-profit organisations are our smallest customer fraction, but we do value them very much. Their problems very often are extremely challenging. It is a demanding business for a contract research company like ChiroBlock to earn money by solving such challenging tasks based on the tight budgets of many universities and institutes.

ChiroBlock faces/adresses this problem with special offers for this customer group. Such options include the support of our marketing activities by client publications and co-operation or education agreements. So, we not only benefit in terms of turnover and direct profits but also by increasing our (international) reputation and by the direct influx of cutting – edge know-how.

ChiroBlock has created a special process of handling enquiries of academics in order to meet the special requirements and the small budgets of public researchers. This enables us to profitably deal with small project volumes from 1.000 EUR up.

In the past, there have been many prejudices against outsourcing from academics. Some common arguments of (mainly chemistry) scientists were:

• we synthesize our intermediates ourselves.."
• "we do not have money to be spent on compounds.."
• "we only buy substances from the usual suppliers.."
• "making compounds is a good exercise for chemistry students.."
• "our research programs are strictly confidential.."
• "Custom synthesis? - Isn't that something for academics to EARN money?"

During the last years, the attitudes have changed, especially with research groups in the fields of medicine, pharmacy, biotechnology, new materials and nanotechnology:

• Top-researchers can not afford to waste time and manpower by synthesizing intermediates.
• The number of chemistry students and PhD - students who are willing and/or able to deal with ‚simple' organic synthesis is decreasing dramatically.
• Leading research groups do have large budgets.
• "We invest heavily in sophisticated equipment. Why shouldn't we invest in high-quality substances?"

So academics have good reasons for buying compounds and focusing on their research.

The following example is meant to outline possible advantages of outsourcing parts of chemical research & synthesis:

Problem:

You need 50g of a (known/new) compound (three step synthesis, five days work to get the purified substance).

Solutions:

i) let your PhD-student make the substance

ii) place a custom synthesis order

And this would be your costs and the prices to pay:

At first sight 2.000 >> 250 and 2.000 > 1.000.

But what about RISKS (yields are lower than expected, the published synthesis route does not work at all..)?

And - even more important - what about the DELAYS in your research? You don't make one step further during this one week of repeated organic synthesis. You can't even publish its results.

Are you still convinced of the relation: 2.000 > (250 + R + D)???

..An increasing number of colleagues of yours are not!!

Instances:

A pharmaceutical department at an university in Eastern Europe was looking for 12 related compounds as reference substances (heterocycles, half of them being already described, half of them were unknown at this time; 1g each, purity > 98%). We supplied them.

A public research institute in Germany was seeking a special compound for modifying electrodes. They needed it within a fortnight. We supplied it.

A research group at an Italian university ordered 5g of an amino acid (ee>98%). We delivered and proved quality by chiral CZE.

A group at the Max - Planck - Institute was looking for someone who improved the synthesis of a metabolic compound which they needed for their research project. We were able to solve this problem.

ChiroBlock has been serving academics since more than seven years. We do know the special requirements of this customer group and we are aware of their differences compared to those of other clients as pharma and biotech.

More detailled information, e.g. on prices and pricing options, on customer audits, on our capacity available or – if applicable - on reference contacts within your company, are available on request. You are invited to visit us at any time on site or to meet us at exhibitions.

However, while we strive to inform you as thouroughly as possible, it is not possible for us to name customers, successfull projects or other details of ChiroBlock’s track record in the exclusive business.

So, the only ways for new customers to get deeper insight into our abilities are:

• to ask collegues who have already been customers of ChiroBlock
• to study/asses the results of our in-house research, of our non-exclusive business, or
• to simply test us by placing a first order

We are probably able to serve you as well.

Simply ask for a quotation or additional information!