Sunnyvale, CA (PRWEB) March 10, 2015

Freeslate, Inc., the leading provider of high throughput research solutions for biopharmaceutical development, and The Center for Intelligent Research in Crystal Engineering (CIRCE), a leading Contract Research Organization (CRO) focused on predictive crystallization, announced a partnership aimed at addressing challenging solid state problems. Freeslate has delivered high throughput laboratory automation products for solid state development for more than 15 years. This partnership offers the opportunity to utilize CIRCE’s predictive modeling to enable a higher probability of success from high throughput studies.

The pharmaceutical industry continues to face difficult solid state challenges. When combined, predictive and high throughput experimental approaches can make significant strides toward solving these challenges. Often organizations see these approaches to be supplementary and thus competitive. However, combining the power of predictive polymorph or cocrystal forms with high throughput experimental verification can solve the most difficult crystallization problems in the industry.

“Our virtual technologies are the ideal tools to combine with experimental high throughput approaches in order to save resources without reducing efficiency,” said Rafel Prohens, Scientific Director of CIRCE.

“We are constantly looking for ways to offer greater value to our customers,” said John S. Senaldi, President and CEO of Freeslate. “This partnership is a great opportunity to combine two advanced research techniques to attack the most difficult solid state challenges.”

CIRCE has licensed and developed a number of technologies to support predictive modeling for crystals. Professor Chris Hunter (Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge) developed the Virtual Cocrystal Screening – the most reliable technology for predicting which coformers will cocrystallize with a higher probability with a specific molecule. CIRCE, as co-developer, owns the exclusive rights to this technology. Professor Juan Novoa (Molecular Material Structure Group, University of Barcelona) has developed the Virtual Polymorph Screening that predicts the existence of new polymorphs for a particular organic compound. CIRCE has also licensed the exclusive rights to this software. Combined, these tools allow for accurate predictions of both polymorphs and cocrystals. Today, CIRCE is co-developing with Professor Chris Hunter new computational tools for virtual solubility prediction of cocrystals and pure APIs, which are already available.

Freeslate’s CM Protégé PharmD and Core Module 3 Preformulation Systems automate polymorph, cocrystal, and solubility screens. The systems can evaluate up to 384 crystallization conditions per run to rapidly turn around solid form screening projects. Solid forms can be analyzed by birefringence, x-ray powder diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy directly from the glass Universal Substrate without any manual manipulation of fragile crystals. Heating, cooling, and mixing on-deck allows for simultaneous slurry, precipitation, cooling, and evaporation experiments on a single platform. Freeslate’s LEA Software supports intuitive experiment design or import of Design of Experiment (DOE) designs. Upon execution of the experiments, data is captured and linked to experimental conditions in a centralized database, allowing for easy reporting and simple export of the data to support predictive modeling.

About Freeslate

Freeslate is a privately held company providing laboratory automation products that dramatically improve the productivity and innovation of drug development organizations. For more than a decade, Freeslate has been working with customers to automate complex chemical research processes. Our resulting product line includes solutions for protein and vaccine drug formulation development, small molecule solubility, and polymorph screening and process chemistry. We start with a scientific understanding of our customer’s bottlenecks and utilize our robust and proprietary automation platforms and integrated Lab Execution and Analysis (LEA) software suite to deliver solutions that make a difference. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with direct sales and service in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.freeslate.com.

About CIRCE

CIRCE is a technological company specialized in Crystal Engineering, based in UK and Spain that offers to the pharmaceutical industry innovative and exclusive technologies to help its clients to acquire the most complete portfolio of solid forms for their organic compounds. Visit http://www.circecrystal.com.






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