How Does Cambrex Approach Peptide Development?

Adrian Amador is Director of Chemistry at Snapdragon Chemistry in Waltham, MA. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with research experience across academia and industry spanning photochemistry, spectroscopy, novel photocatalytic methodologies, and sustainable polymers.

He leads a team of process chemists developing efficient manufacturing processes for complex synthetic therapeutics — peptides, oligonucleotides, and synthetic polymers. His approach draws on automation to build more efficient workflows, alongside data-rich experimentation and data science to deepen process understanding and support robust manufacturing for early-phase products.

Asked how Cambrex approaches peptide development, Amador points to liquid-phase processes as the source of the company's most innovative thinking in the area. Moving away from conventional solid-phase peptide synthesis has allowed his teams to improve efficiency substantially — in many cases by an order of magnitude over what the standard solid-phase route delivers.