Learning to Read or Reading to Learn?
Most chemists find it hard to keep up with the literature and reading journals often comes at the bottom of the pile (literally with hard-copy journals) when it comes to work priorities. However for a chemist to be truly innovative it is vitally important to know the latest advances in the subject.
One way to keep up is by focussing on review articles, or even better on reading the latest books. The journal, Organic Process Research and Development, has more book reviews than most other journals and the books are usually relevant to process R&D chemists and engineers. Many of these reviews are written by Scientific Update staff, who, as part of their consultancy remits, need to be fully aware of recent advances and find that reading books is the best way to pick up knowledge.
In this newsletter, we will try to highlight the most recent books which are required reading for the innovative process chemist and to give you an idea of the chapters which may be most useful. Unfortunately electronic search tools, which are excellent for journal articles, are not so efficient when it comes to book chapters, particularly those books which have multiple authors who are not listed on the title page. My own extensive chapter on “Development and Scale up in the Pharmaceutical Industry” which was published in the first edition of Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry in 1988, does not appear in electronic searches for process R&D reviews.
Sometimes the title of the book disguises the true contents. A recent example of a book with a misleading title is “Fundamentals of Early Clinical Drug Development” which is really a collection of excellent case studies in process R&D, taken mostly from a symposium of the same name. The subtitle “from synthesis design to Formulation” is a truer reflection of the contents. The 15 chapters make excellent reading and, as well as some informative process R&D case studies there are chapters on Large Scale Synthesis from an Engineering Perspective; Radio Isotopes; Selection of Drug Form; Particle Size Control; Early Formulation and IP issues. Highly recommended!!
One other book is also recommended reading for all chemists and engineers. The first is entitled “The Chemistry of Process Development in the Fine Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries” by C Someswara Rao and is a mammoth work written mostly by this Indian scientist with little help from outside. Over 1300 pages long, this is essentially an organic chemistry book written from the viewpoint of the industrial process chemist and has thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of references. I had the good fortune to meet the author on a recent visit to India and what a wonderful person he is, so modest and unassuming. But he has done a great service for the process chemist. The latest edition is the second but he told me he is planning a third, even more comprehensive edition. No retirement for Dr Rao, I feel.
As an example from the book, there is a chapter on phase transfer catalysis which stretches to over 100 pages and is, in itself, the most up-to-date review on the subject. Many other chapters are treated in the same comprehensive fashion. The tome is most useful when discussing reagents for carrying out a particular transformation on scale and is accompanied by hundreds of examples which serve to guide the reader on the most appropriate choice for his reaction and the conditions to use.
The information obtained from the books highlighted above could not be obtained easily from the literature, except with a lot of hard work. The only other way of obtaining useful information in a comprehensive easily assimilated form is by attending a training course devoted to a particular topic.
We feel that at Scientific Update, because we are all process chemists, that we have the best courses for the process R&D community since we focus on the needs of this group.
• Trevor Laird
