The licensing deal shores up Avantium's technical capacity in chiral chemistry, which is a growing focus in the pharmaceutical industry. A recently-released study estimates that the US market for chiral technologies - used to make single isomers of compounds - will grow by an estimated 8.8 per cent a year to reach a value of $1.8 billion (€1.4bn) in 2008.
Avantium provides intrinsically scaleable solid-state characterisation and chemical development to companies who want to scale-up production processes to pilot plant and production. Access to Chiral Quest's catalysts for asymmetric reactions will increase the diversity of the reactions that Avantium can handle.
