SHANGHAI, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- WuXi PharmaTech (NYSE: WX), a leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device research and development outsourcing company with operations in China and the United States, is proud to announce that Dr. Steven V. Ley, BP Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, visited WuXi AppTec facilities in Shanghai on September 28. He gave a lecture to WuXi scientists titled "New Tools for Synthesis: Enabling Technologies" as part of the WuXi AppTec Science Seminar Series.
Dr. Ley is a world-renowned organic chemist. He founded the Ley Group, which has published extensively on the synthesis of natural products and has synthesized more than 130 target compounds. Dr. Ley's work on iron chemistry, encapsulated reagents, microbial oxidation, spiroketals, and microwave chemistry has been groundbreaking. He has pioneered the use of immobilized reagents in multi-step organic synthesis to make compounds in a cleaner and more effective way. This work now incorporates flow chemistry for multistep organic synthesis applications. He has devised many practical and useful protecting groups using acetal chemistry. He has done significant work in the area of organic catalysis and was one of the inventors of tetrapropylammonium perruthenate (TPAP), a catalytic oxidant that is now used worldwide and cited extensively.
Dr. Ley has published 698 papers to date. His recent awards include the Paracelsus Prize, the Heinrich Wieland Prize, the Tetrahedron Prize, the Perkin Prize for Organic Chemistry, the High Throughput Drug Discovery Methodologies Award, the Prous Institute-Overton and Meyer Award for New Technologies in Drug Discovery and the Hans Heroff Inhoffen Medal. In 1990 he was elected to the Royal Society (London) and was President of The Royal Society of Chemistry from 2000-2002. He was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in January 2002.
"It is an honor to speak at WuXi PharmaTech, which provides high-quality research and development services to the world's leading life science companies," Dr. Ley said. "I was very impressed by WuXi's comprehensive training system and the research capabilities of WuXi scientists."
"We are privileged to have Dr. Ley share his expertise with our scientists," commented Dr. Ge Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WuXi AppTec. "As we broaden our R&D service scope, our success depends on the quality of our scientists. Investing in people will continue to be our key strategy."
For more information, please contact:
Stephanie Liu (for the media)
Tel: +86-21-5046-4362
Email: Stephanie_liu@wuxiapptec.com
Ronald Aldridge (for investors)
Tel: +1-201-585-2048
Email: Ron_Aldridge@wuxiapptec.com
