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Organic chemistry

Streamlining drug synthesis

Drug manufacture can benefit from flow synthesis, in which raw materials are fed into a sequence of reactors, producing the drug as a continuous output. A flow strategy that capitalizes on solid catalysts has now been realized. See Letter p.329

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Figure 1: Flow synthesis of the anti-inflammatory drug (R)-rolipram.

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Correspondence to Joel M. Hawkins.

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Hawkins, J. Streamlining drug synthesis. Nature 520, 302–303 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/520302a

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