AI-enabled Route Scouting Service

Accelerate route selection and process development for the synthesis of your API. Lonza's AI-enabled Route Scouting Service combines extensive, proprietary commercial data in the industry-leading computer-aided synthesis planning technology. Our experts use this capability to ensure that partners access optimal synthetic pathways to their drug candidates, have more resilient raw material supply chains, and experience accelerated process R&D startup times.

Shorter synthetic pathways

Identify shorter and higher-probability-of-success paths from accessible, ready-for-scale starting materials to API.

More resilient supply chains

Make sourcing decisions that balance cost and risk, leveraging real-world, global chemical supply chain intelligence.

Enhancement of IP estate

Complete comprehensive synthetic strategy assessments for first generation process designs or lifecycle management campaigns.

Innovative technologies to accelerate route selection and process development

Our Route Scouting Service is delivered with a methodical, collaborative and transparent approach. In each phase, process research and development experts leverage innovative enabling technologies to realize optimal synthetic pathways for clinical and commercial API manufacturing.

Phase 01: We create and systematically prioritize synthetic route options, aimed at partner-driven, predefined process ideals. Our experts draw from their deep expertise and Lonza IP-enabled, predictive cheminformatics to mitigate complexity and define efficient synthetic pathways.

Phase 02: We consolidate sourcing intelligence that enables our partners to take strategic sourcing decisions for the routes identified as having the greatest potential (technically and commercially).

Phase 03: Process Research & Development examines the effectiveness and performance of the top-rated, client-nominated process route candidates. Here, Lonza SMEs leverage high-throughput experimentation robotics and decades of development experience to expedite reduction in risk, costs, impurities and cycle times.

Tailor outputs to development demands

Computer-aided synthesis planning technologies (CSPTs) calculate the shortest, highest-probability-of-success pathways for breaking down a target API into relevant starting materials. CSPTs’ discovery phase-focused compound libraries and pricing data can limit their impact in the development phase.

By combining our intellectual capital with databases that are used by a leading AI-enabled CSPT, we have tailored its performance to development needs — to deliver better route predictions and accelerate service startup times.

Integration of our unique supply chain expertise lets us pass on direct benefits to our partners, helping to reduce API costs and enhance the commercial success of their promising new therapies.

Connect with our experts

Give your objectives and priorities focus

Our collaborative classification and prioritization efforts create parameters that fall into two categories – Commercial and Technical — each aligned to API manufacturing process ideals.

They are set up to answer questions like:

“Is a raw material supply chain readied for rapid startup – and for scale – if I select this route?”
“Does the synthetic plan address well specific problematic features of the API or the incumbent synthesis?”

By agreeing on the fitness of proposed factors and their relative importance – using the scoring approach – the best-fit options will rise to the top.

Empower your company’s supply chain decision-making with raw material sourcing information for each top-rated route. For example, we present data about the number of raw material suppliers available, regionally, on a global basis.

We’re bringing real-world chemical information from many disparate locations and forms and structuring it in a way that helps our experts find shorter and more economical paths from starting materials to APIs.

— Dr. Simon Wagschal, Associate Director, Advanced Chemistry Technologies, Lonza Small Molecules

Meet the Expert

Dr. Simon Wagschal

Associate Director, Advanced Chemistry Technologies

Simon Wagschal currently works within Lonza’s Advanced Chemistry Technologies team. Prior to this, he worked within Janssen External R&D team, focusing on compounds in early development and delivering GxP batches at CRO partners.

Simon earned his Ph.D. in 2010 from École Polytechnique, Paris, France, under the supervision of Prof. El Kaïm and Prof. Grimaud. He then delved into organometallic chemistry during his postdoctoral stay with the Kündig group in Geneva, Switzerland.

Meet the Expert

Aaron Johnson

Cheminformatics Data Scientist

Aaron Johnson is a cheminformatics data scientist in Lonza’s Small Molecules R&D team. With a versatile background in both chemistry and computer science, he fluently bridges the gap between these disciplines. Aaron’s work applies the latest advances in data science and cheminformatics to solving problems and accelerating product development in the pharmaceutical industry.