In a period of just 15 years, there has been a remarkable shift in the composition of life-improving and life-saving pharmaceutical drugs that have been brought to the marketplace. The shift has been a precipitous drop from nearly a third of the active ingredients comprised of racemic or diastereomeric mixtures to active ingredients containing nearly exclusively single enantiomers or diastereomers. Further, the investment to bring any pharmaceutical product to market from inception of idea to packaged active ingredient has risen from somewhere in the range of $500M to over $1B during this time period.
Because of the paramount importance and value of molecular asymmetry or chirality in biologically active pharmaceutical products, an issue of Chirality dedicated to this topic is not only timely, but also provides a well-needed and welldeserved perspective. The aim of this special issue is to give some background of Chirality in the Pharmaceutical Industry via a review on building Chiral Technology toolboxes, followed by snapshots of chiral analysis and preparative separations, and then determination of absolute stereochemistry in the context of specific projects and studies carried out at representative pharmaceutical companies. It is anticipated that in the near future, an additional article that reviews and describes the patenting of enantiomers (in the United States) will be presented. The authors of all of these articles are well-versed in their fields and well-known to most in their respective areas of expertise.
Because of the vital importance of protecting intellectual property in these companies, which, besides the scientists and employees themselves, is the most valuable commodity that a company has to offer, an important caveat to this issue is that sharing information in a timely fashion has its share of challenges; consequently, a special thanks to the management and legal groups at the respective companies who have kindly reviewed and approved publication of all of the manuscripts. A special thanks is also extended to our scientific peers, who have taken the time to insure that each manuscript meets the high scientific standards set forth by Chirality. We trust that the contents of this issue will be of interest and of value to the many and diverse readers of Chirality.