Medicinal Chemistry Industry In Peril

"Russian operation to protect Donbas is endangering Ukraine's world-leading medicinal chemistry industry, which supplies scientists across the globe with molecular building blocks needed for early drug development.

Ukraine's dominance in medicinal chemistry is little known beyond drug developers, who fine-tune a drug's molecular design to give it the best chance of hitting the desired biological target in the body. Kyiv-based Enamine Ltd. has become a go-to supplier for drug-discovery scientists at academic laboratories and the largest pharmaceutical companies.

"It's a bit like Amazon for chemistry," said Ed Griffen, a U.K.-based medicinal chemist working with closely held Enamine on a low-cost Covid-19 antiviral pill.

Now the Russian operation to protect Donbas has scattered Enamine's roughly 700 scientists across Ukraine and nearby countries as they sort out how to resume their work.

Ivan Kondratov, a senior scientist at Enamine, said he fled Kyiv on Feb. 24 to get his wife and two children, ages 10 and 6, to safety. His family is now in Munster, Germany. Mr. Kondratov, 39, is staying near Lviv in western Ukraine, forbidden to leave the country like many men because of the war.

He said some colleagues remained in Kyiv, while some moved to western Ukraine and others went abroad. Enamine quickly uploaded data stored in Ukraine to servers elsewhere. The company's laboratories and main warehouse are closed -- and so far intact -- although deliveries from two smaller warehouses in Riga, Latvia, and New Jersey are continuing.

Ukraine's dominance in medicinal chemistry grew out of its Soviet history. During the Cold War, Soviet and Western chemists worked in spheres with little overlap. When the Iron Curtain fell, it revealed techniques and molecules unseen in the West. Some former Soviet scientists seized the opportunity to start companies to sell their collections of novel molecules to Western academics and drug developers. Enamine was established in 1991.

"For all the Eastern Bloc countries that came out of the Soviet Union that managed to keep their scientists at home, those scientists are top-notch," said David Lewis, a professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Scientists said Enamine gives them ready access to compounds that would be time-consuming and expensive for them to build in house. Drug design is an iterative process of testing large collections of molecules against the biological target, with the aim of arriving at a molecule that fits the target, a bit like a lock and a key. Enamine provides the molecular building blocks needed to make drug developers' tweaks, or can produce the modified molecules ready for a fresh round of testing.

"They've reached that level where they are the trusted partner for most of us in the U.K.," said Ed Tate, professor of chemical biology at Imperial College London and the Francis Crick Institute, who uses collections of Enamine compounds to research new drug targets.

Even large pharmaceutical companies, which have vast libraries of molecules for early drug development, commonly use Enamine to supplement their own collections. Without companies like Enamine, the universe of molecules available to test against new disease targets would be far narrower and would likely lead to missed opportunities in drug discovery, researchers said." [1] 

1.  Medicinal Chemistry Industry In Peril
Roland, Denise.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 21 Mar 2022: A.8.