What our clients say about CanAm Bioresearch
CanAm Bioresearch has worked with a number of local and international companies throughout the drug discovery and development process from generating libraries of compounds during the screening process, to hit generation, SAR-based design, lead identification, lead optimization, drug candidate confirmation, and finally to large scale synthesis of the drug candidate for pre-clinical toxicological studies, and technology transfer to a GMP manufacturing company.
More specifically, CanAm has worked with three different clients from screening to drug candidate stage, in each case synthesizing hundreds of compounds over the term of the project and developing a drug candidate in a short period of time. CanAm also helped these collaborations lead to multiple patent filings. Each client secured between USD 10 million to USD 75 million in financing from top tier venture capital firms after CanAm became their organic and medicinal chemistry research arm. One client was acquired by Gilead Sciences, Inc., bringing a tidy return to its venture capital backers. Another client’s drug candidate developed with CanAm is about to enter clinical trials. CanAm continues to work with a third client as they pursue additional drug candidates.
“CanAm Bioresearch is an excellent synthetic and medicinal chemistry CRO with a flexible all-PhD research team that is skilled in organic synthesis and adept at navigating through difficult medicinal chemistry projects. CanAm’s reliable and efficient delivery of compounds, combined with the ability to quickly re-focus or re-design new compounds based on regular feedback from biological assay results, makes it an outstanding partner for any medicinal chemistry project.
Within a 3-year span during our 7-year long collaboration, CanAm took the project from a few hits to a viable drug candidate in less than 500 total compounds, synthesizing libraries of analogues as well as numerous diverse molecules with complex scaffolds strategically designed based on SAR results. At the same time, CanAm helped write patent sections to protect the IP space surrounding the future drug candidate and other active compounds.
CanAm later morphed into a scale-up group by producing multiple 10-25 gram-scale batches of the drug candidate following a 10-step synthetic sequence toward an enantiopure complex molecule with multiple stereogenic centers. The team also successfully took on optimizing the synthetic process by improving step procedures, increasing yields, reducing or replacing unfavorable solvents and substituting chromatography purifications with enhanced workups and crystallizations. Eventually, CanAm transferred its knowledge to the CMO partner via multiple virtual meetings and accompanied the CMO through the entire process development, resulting in the production of a 350 gram-scale cGMP batch of the drug candidate by the CMO using the optimized synthetic route developed by CanAm.
In parallel with the synthetic chemistry, CanAm also provided excellent analytical chemistry work over the course of the project, delivering vital information for its success including stability and solubility studies, partitioning experiments, cell penetration studies, hepatocyte stability assays and tissue analysis from PK studies.”
Martin Bonde , Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
Inthera Bioscience AG
Zürich, SWITZERLAND
“CanAm is an outstanding synthetic and medicinal chemistry CRO. We have worked with them for years and they have proven to be one of the strongest synthetic chemistry companies that we have come across. They have worked on a variety of complex chemical scaffolds, including macrocycles, and they continued to work out challenging synthesis and deliver highly novel compounds that added significant diversity to our internal chemical library. Their work helped us to initiate and complete several medicinal chemistry projects in an efficient and productive way. They are very easy to work with and they are able to be flexible and change direction on short notice. We will continue to work with CanAm and I would recommend them highly for any synthetic/medicinal chemistry support.”
Brian C. Shook, Ph.D.
Senior Principal Scientist
Janssen R&D
Spring House, PA, USA
“Our collaboration with CanAm Bioresearch has been vital for us. They are the best medicinal chemistry CRO we have ever worked with. They are fast in generating analogs in several chemotypes, very flexible on expanding the group as needed, and know when and how to take short-cuts to save time without sacrificing quality. This diligence helped us converge rapidly on a clinical candidate. When we were in the final stages of selection between a few compounds, they reinvented themselves into a scale-up group and made 50 grams of a 12-step synthesis compound with some unstable intermediates. The group also participated in videoconferences with a process chemistry CRO to transfer their knowledge to the group who produced several kilos of the clinical candidate using essentially their route. The team is currently generating alternate salts to be used in a capsule formulation. The same group is making excellent progress on our second demethylase target as well.
Another key aspect of the collaboration for us has been the highly flexible and competent analytical chemistry. This group created an assay for the analysis of chemically unstable metabolites of our clinical candidate, which proved vital to understanding the in-vivo behavior of the compound. They also expanded this methodology to a number of biological matrices, and were able to do this with high precision. Their methods have been used in many laboratories on three continents. The analytical group also ran solid and solution stability measurements, and helped us improve our formulation and its stability.”
Lars-Ole Gerlach, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President R&D
EpiTherapeutics ApS
Copenhagen, DENMARK