Einladung zum Besuch bei METALOR AG und der DIAC-Jahresversammlung am 22.02.2019

An die Mitglieder der DIAC der
Schweizerischen Chemischen Gesellschaft (SCG)

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Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren

Wir freuen uns, Sie zur diesjährigen Mitgliederversammlung nach Marin-Epagnier (NE) einladen zu dürfen.

Freitag, 22. Februar 2019, ab 09.45 Uhr
im Marin Business Center, Route des Perveuils 2, CH-2074 Marin-Epagnier
marinbusinesscenter.ch

ca. 8min. ab Bahnhof und ca. 3 min von der Firma Metalor Technologies entfernt.
www.metalor.com

Wir werden unsere Versammlung zusammen mit einem Besuch bei der METALOR in Marin durchführen. Die Firma Metalor veredelt hochwertige Edelmetalle, dabei werden unter anderem Metall-Katalysatoren für die Chemische Industrie hergestellt und rezykliert. Die Geschäfte drehen sich hauptsächlich um Edelmetalle, wobei die Kernkomptenz für Chemie, Metallurgie, sowie im Management von Edelmetallen liegt.

Nach der Präsentation unserer Gastgeberfirma durch Frau Dr. Lynda Si-Ahmed und Herrn Dr. Jonathan Jodry von Metalor, freuen wir uns auch über ein Referat zum Thema:“Biocatalysis – Industrial Applications – Today & Tomorrow” präsentiert durch Prof. Dr. Rebecca Buller der ZHAW, gleich anschließend wird unsere Mitgliederversammlung stattfinden.

Nach dem Essen im Marin Business Center freuen wir uns am frühen Nachmittag auf die Besichtigung der Anlagen bei Metalor.

Der Vorstand der DIAC hofft, Sie zahlreich am 22. Februar 2019 begrüssen zu dürfen.
Freundliche Grüsse
Dr. Bernhard Urwyler, Präsident
 

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Programm

Ab 09.45	Besammlung im Marin Business Center, Route des Perveuils 2, CH-2074 Marin-Epagnier
10.00	Einführung und Vorstellung der Firma Metalor Technologies durch Frau Dr. Lynda Si-Ahmed und Herrn Dr. Jonathan Jodry, Metalor in Marin-Epagnier
10.30	Vortrag: von Prof. Dr. Rebecca Buller ZHAW über “Biocatalysis – Industrial Applications – Today & Tomorrow”
11.15	Mitgliederversammlung 2019 der DIAC
12.00	Mittagessen im Marin Business Center
13.15	Besichtigung der Anlagen der Metalor an der Route des Perveuils 8, CH-2074 Marin-Epagnier
15.00	Schlussbesprechung & Verabschiedung

Anmeldungen bis zum 15. Februar 2019 via Onlineformualr oder per Mail mit dem Anmeldetalon im Einladungsbrief.

 

Invitation en français

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Anreise zum Marin Business Center
Empfang: Marin Business Center Route des Perveuils 2, CH-2074 Marin-Epagnier ab ca. 09h45
Wegbeschreibung vom Bahnhof Marin-Epagnier: ca. 2-5 Minuten Fussweg bis zum Marin Business Zentrum (Empfang) siehe Plan.

Zu beachten
Bitte beachten Sie die Hygiene- und Sicherheitsvorschriften: Tragen Sie bequeme Kleider und gutes geschlossenes Schuhwerk. Telefone und Schmuck darf nicht in den Anlagen von Metalor getragen werden, kann aber vorher eingeschlossen deponiert werden. Bitte bringe sie wo möglich ihre eigene Schutzbrille mit.
Das Fotografieren sowie Bildaufzeichnungen sind nicht erlaubt. Der Betrieb ist rauchfrei.
Aus Sicherheitsgründen müssen sich alle Teilnehmer angemeldet haben um für den Besuch im Werk der Metalor registriert zu werden.

 

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David Spichiger, SCS
14.01.2019

 

3rd European Chemistry Partnering, 26 Feb 2019, Frankfurt (GER)

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What is the ECP?
Europe´s leading Chemistry industry Partnering event

What’s it all about?
Innovation. Cooperation. Investment. Customers.

What can I get out of it?
A great deal of high-caliber business contacts in One Day.

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3rd European Chemistry Partnering
26. February 2019
Kap Europa, Frankfurt, Germany 
https://european-chemistry-partnering.com

Use the promo-link below to register for the event. SCS will profit as partner of the event:

https://en.xing-events.com/e/xqzktq

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Your fastest way to increase revenue

New Chemical industry customers and partners in one productive day
New customers. New partners. More turn-over. A productive day: More than 500 decision makers attended the 2nd European Chemistry Partnering. The enthusiastic participants came from large organizations as well as investors, from small and medium-sized enterprises, and above all from young companies and chemical start-ups who often find it difficult to engage with the larger companies.

505 participants representing 31 nations from Europe and other innovative countries from four continents came together. Professional short presentations, pre-arranged meetings and the informal pre-event evening gathering created numerous opportunities for contacts. More than 1,200 meetings were arranged. Chemistry, industrial biotechnology, digitization, nanotechnology – many ways to broaden horizons!

The European Chemistry Partnering is international and interdisciplinary.

“Most productive day of the year“, and Michael Brandkamp said after the first ECP Summer Summit in September 2018 in Düsseldorf: “The ECP is a great marketplace” said Michael Brandkamp, Managing Director of High-Tech Gründerfonds, in his opening speech at the first ECP Summer Summit, and added: “We have an unimaginable density of Start-ups in Europe. Here at the ECP, their innovative strength becomes permanently transparent for the first time. And all of us, young growth companies, investors as well as industrial enterprises, need dialog in such an international competitive environment more urgently than ever”.

  

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David Spichiger, SCS
28.12.2018 

 

 

 

 

 

14th Freiburger Symposium: save the date, 16.-17.05.2019

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14. Freiburger Symposium 2019
«Industrial Applications of Catalysis – Time for New Approaches»

Conference Location
School of Engineering and Architecture of Fribourg
Bd de Pérolles 80
CH-1705 Freiburg
Auditoire « Edouard Gremaud », Building A

Registration
Via the conference website. Deadline is April 23., 2019

Conference Fees
The registration fee includes access to conference sessions, lunch and all-day refreshments, wine reception and conference documents:
CHF 600.– DIAC members
CHF 640.– other members of SCS and members of SVC
CHF 800.– all other participants (non-SCS members)
CHF 350.– retired and unemployed persons
CHF 100.– students and postdocs
Optional symposium dinner on Thursday evening: CHF 100.–

Contact
Freiburger Symposium 2019
Hochschule für Technik und Architektur Freiburg
Tel.: + 41 26 429 67 01, E-Mail:
Chair: Dr. Dr. Roger Marti, HTA Freiburg

Website
http://scg.ch/freiburger-symposium/2019

 

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David Spichiger, SCS
15.11.2018

 

Review Swiss Industrial Chemistry Symposium 2018

DOI: 10.1002/chemv.201800100
Author: Vera Koester (photos ©SCS/David Spichiger)
Published Date: 24 Oktober 2018
Copyright: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA

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The 2nd Swiss Industrial Chemistry Symposium (SICS’18) - organized by the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS) and held at the University of Basel, Switzerland, on October 19, 2018—brought together industrial chemists working in research and Ph.D. students and postdocs of Swiss universities. Over 260 delegates attended the symposium, about 70% of them came from industry. 

The meeting offered a unique platform for researchers from industry to present their work in 15 talks. 52 Ph.D. students and postdocs had the chance to present their work with a poster. In a relaxed and very positive atmosphere, the one-day event provided many opportunities for attendees to exchange with colleagues from diverse backgrounds or to look at the exhibition stands.

The full program and the speakers' abstracts are available on the symposium website.

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Poster Prizes & Farewell

Attending Ph.D. students and postdocs had to present a poster during the symposium. During the lunch break, a jury selected the three best posters [2]. The winners–Johannes Diesel, EPFL Lausanne
 (Nickel-Catalyzed Enantioselective Pyridone C–H Functionalizations Enabled by a Bulky N Heterocyclic Carbene Ligand), Alejandro Guarnieri Ibáñez, University of Geneva
 (Diversity-Oriented Synthesis of Heterocycles and Macrocycles by Controlled Reactions of Oxetanes with α-Iminocarbenes), and Benson Jelier, ETH Zürich
 (Radical Trifluoromethoxylation of Arenes Triggered by a Visible-Light-Mediated N–O Bond Redox Fragmentation)—had the chance to present their research in the Afternoon Session in five-minute talks. The SICS Best Poster award is endowed with a certificate and a cash cheque of CHF 100.

The symposium ended with farewell words from Dr. Alain De Mesmaeker, President of the SCS from Syngenta, Basel, and David Spichiger, Executive Director of SCS. Afterwards, the participants met for an aperitif and networking. The participants of the symposium were very enthusiastic about the lectures and discussions. "It is a must-be event for the Swiss chemical industry, at least around Basel", one participant said. The SCS plans a 3rd Swiss Industrial Chemistry Symposium in Basel in 2020. 

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Selected Talks

New Class of Antibiotics in Phase III Trial

A big challenge for the pharmaceutical industry is the fight against the growing number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Since the 1960s, no antibiotics with new mechanisms have come to the market. Dr. Marc Thommen, Polyphor Ltd., Allschwil, and Dr. Stefan Eissler, Bachem AG, Bubendorf, reported in their tandem talk in the Morning Session on the new antibiotic murepavadin. Currently, it is in a phase III clinical trial.

Gram-negative bacteria account for approx. 50 % of the severe hospital-acquired infections. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is responsible for 10 % of all hospital-acquired infections and the second-leading cause of hospital-acquired pneumonia, with mortality rates of approximately 30–40 %. Its strain is resistant against the widely used antibiotic carbapenem. Therefore, the World Health Organization (WHO) has classified it as one of the top three critical pathogens. Murepavadin is potentially the first new class of antibiotics to be introduced against gram-negative bacteria in about 50 years [1].

The 14-amino-acid cyclic peptide murepavadin is a member of the outer membrane protein targeting antibiotics (OMPTA) class. It inhibits the outer membrane transporter protein LptD of P. aeruginosa. Murepavadin is a pathogen-specific antibiotic with a new mechanism of action against which pathogens may only slowly build resistance.

Murepavadin was discovered by Polyphor using their Polyphor Protein Epitope Mimetics (PEM) platform. Macrocyclic PEMs are medium-sized (0.7–2 kDa), fully synthetic, cyclic peptide-like molecules that mimic the secondary structures of proteins. The company also optimized the medical chemistry of the murepavadin. Bachem AG looked at the scaling-up, process optimization, and GMP manufacturing.

Daylight Management in Buildings

In the past, light management was mainly used to improve safety. Today, it is known that daylight improves the performance of office workers, promotes their well-being, and boosts physical and mental health. In addition, light management can reduce the energy costs of electric lighting in office buildings. Dr. Andreas Hafner, BASF Schweiz AG, Basel, gave examples of how materials science helps to manage illumination in buildings.

Daylight Redirection Foil (DARE) Light Tube (LUX) is a technology that redirects light and transports it via refractive micro-optic foils to bring daylight into building interiors so even windowless rooms do not need artificial light during the day. Facade elements capture the sunlight with refractive foils. Reflection on the inner tube walls concentrates and transports the light up to 12 m deep into the interior of a building where light fixtures shine the daylight into the rooms. The technology is currently tested at a test house run by EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology), Dübendorf.

Another technology produces sun-like artificial light: A polymeric color conversion film converts blue LED wavelengths to white light which is very similar to natural light. This allows the use of the cheapest LEDS to provide perfect light with a Color Rendering Index (CRI) over 95. The higher the CRI (max. = 100), the better the color rendering ability of a light source. Cheap LEDs typically have a CRI of 51; standard LEDs one of 80.

Does Catalysis Need a Future? Does the Future Need Catalysts?

Dr. Werner Bonrath, DSM Nutritional Products, Kaiseraugst, talked in the Afternoon Session about the future of catalysis in the fine chemicals industry. To answer this question properly, Bonrath recommends to first define what "the future" means (five years, a decade, 30 years, etc.), which region of the world we refer to, if university or industry is considered, and which field (polymers, pharma, fine-chemicals, life-science, materials science, etc.) is of interest. In addition, the environmental (E) factor is of importance—it denotes the ratio of the mass of waste per mass of product. Overall, it is very clear that we need better reactions that produce less waste.

Trends for the next years include in Werner Bonraths eyes the need for new catalytic processes with higher selectivity (enantioselectivity, diastereoselectivity) and space-time-yield, economical processes, driven by base-metal catalysts. The importance of bio-transformations will increase further just as the application of existing and new environmental friendly solvents in all type of processes. Sustainable starting materials need to bypass oil- and coal-based feedstock materials. Catalytic reactions need to be combined with purification which also requires a change of the reactor design; especially for continuous processing. Handling of “big data” including computer-assisted design of catalysts will gain increasing importance. Redox, especially photo-redox catalysis, will increase. This is coupled with the use of sustainable electricity for chemical conversions and the use of new materials such as electrodes consisting of base-metal containing materials.

Bonrath ended his talk by summarizing that the future is continuously in processing—a trend is to go from batch processes towards continuous processing—and that the future starts now.

References
[1] Nityakalyani Srinivas, Peter Jetter, Bernhard J. Ueberbacher, Martina Werneburg, Katja Zerbe, Jessica Steinmann, Benjamin Van der Meijden, Francesca Bernardini, Alexander Lederer, Ricardo L. A. Dias, Pauline E. Misson, Heiko Henze, Jürg Zumbrunn, Frank O. Gombert, Daniel Obrecht, Peter Hunziker, Stefan Schauer, Urs Ziegler, Andres Käch, Leo Eberl, Kathrin Riedel, Steven J. DeMarco, John A. Robinson, Peptidomimetic Antibiotics Target Outer-Membrane Biogenesis in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Science 2010, 327(5968), 1010–1013. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182749
[2]  SICS'18 Best Poster Award, SCS homepage (accessed October 2018)

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Picture Gallery

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David Spichiger, SCS
25.10.2018