What are Fine Chemicals?
Fine chemicals are substances that are produced in commercial facilities for use in specialized applications. They take the form of pharmaceutical ingredients, biocides, and specialized chemicals used for technical applications. Fine chemicals are different from bulk chemicals, in that they are made in small batches. Bulk chemicals are produced in large quantities using standardized reactions. Since batches of fine chemicals are smaller than those for bulk chemicals, they are more expensive to produce. The process also generates more waste products than making bulk chemicals. As new medications are brought to the consumer market, their chemical makeup is changed often. These newer drugs are manufactured in relatively small quantities. The active ingredients are assembled in one factory, and then combined with the inert components that make up the medication. The final step is to formulate the drug into pills, capsules, or caplets in individual doses. Biocides are another type of fine c
Pharmaceutical Fine Chemicals, Chemical & Engineering News, July 10, 2000 http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/7828/7828spec.html#Anchor-1344 fluorous chemistry: Highly fluorinated chemical moieties are attached to small organic compounds to facilitate purification of the desired products of a chemical reaction. D Evanko, Chemical Tools, Nature Methods 2(6):406-507 forward chemical genetics: Involves identifying a phenotype in an organism or cell caused by a small molecule and then identifying the target affected. In principle this is analogous to a classical genetics screen, in which one screens for a mutation that has a desired phenotype and then identifies the mutant gene that is responsible. … Forward chemical genetics was an extremely powerful tool in the early days of drug discovery, and we expect that it will be equally powerful if applied systematically to basic biology. Biology Overview Initiative for Chemical Genetics, Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology, Harvard Medical
