Companies can lose millions of dollars if a rival company produces and sells a new polymorph of a compound that has not been covered by their patent. This financial catastrophe can be avoided if researchers maximize the resources available to them at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron radiation facility at the University of Saskatchewan. This was the message of the CLS's 4th Annual User's Meeting in November 2001, which was held to increase public awareness of the progress and prospects of synchrotron radiation research.
At the meeting, existing problems and solutions in the applications of synchrotron radiation were addressed in presentations. Opportunities for developing outstanding scientific programs were discussed along with business activities and industrial and free services.
In the past few years, most of the world's major pharmaceutical companies have been serviced by DARTS, the only synchrotron radiation facility in the UK. In order to meet the growing needs of the pharmaceutical industry, structural information needs to be made available more rapidly than the traditional methods allow. Medicinal chemists must make improvements to their synthetic procedures to produce the appropriate drugs. The CLS will utilize the microcrystal and high-resolution powder facilities available through DARTS to create more challenging samples. This will entail less effort from the parent companies in producing suitable drug samples, and will therefore save valuable time and money.
At the meeting, DARTS' Liz Towns-Andrews explained in her presentation how synchrotron X-ray diffraction has been used extensively in structural studies of small molecules, and their complexes formed with biological macromolecules. The information derived from these measurements forms the basis of the rational drug design process.
University of Toronto's James Rini predicted the role of synchrotron radiation in the advancement of bioengineering and drug design in his presentation. He explored the importance of synchrotron radiation in determining the structure and mechanism of N-acetylglucosaminyltransfarase.
Inelastic X-ray scattering (INRXS) was the topic of a presentation given by Ercan Alp of Advanced Photon Source. INRXS measures vibrational properties of materials, such as the phonon density of states, and derived quantities like specific heat, vibrational entropy, and the speed of sound. It can be used to study dynamical behaviour of two-dimensional systems in the form of isotopicaly decorated thin films.
University of British Columbia's G. Sawatzky spoke on resonant soft X-ray scattering. He explained that for highly structured materials, such as rare-earth compounds, studies of low-energy electronic excitations can provide a better understanding of the ground state properties. In case of weak electronic interaction effects (hybridization effects), the interlevel coupling and consequently j-mixing in the ground state of the system are often disregarded in the interpretation of experimental data by applying a pure atomic approximation (mainly for high-energy spectroscopies) or by using a first order crystal-field theory where the crystal field interaction is assumed to act only within the separate J manifolds.
The oral presentation session was preceded by a poster session featuring 32 posters by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Each poster displayed the uses of synchrotron radiation with a variety of scientific and technical content. The Canadian Institute for Synchrotron Radiation (CISR) sponsored the best poster prize for the participants. The $1,000 honorarium will assist the winner in attending a conference where they will present their synchotron-based work.
The meeting concluded with a banquet and the post-banquet address was given by University of Alberta's Ron Cavell, FCIC and president of CISR. Cavell congratulated Mike Bancroft, MCIC for his leadership in guiding the CLS in its early development.
The CLS facility, a third generation synchrotron light facility, is expected to be fully operational by 2003. Cutting-edge research will be conducted at this unique centre of innovation with at least seven approved beamlines covering far infrared to the hard X-ray regime of the electromagnetic spectrum. Natural Resources Canada, in fact, has been engaged in several projects -- in the fields of minerals and mining, energy and forestry, petrochemistry and others -- that use synchrotron radiation as a means of evaluation.
Through the energetic partnership between academia and industry, this international synchrotron light facility will be a giant step for Canada's international scientific reputation. The $173 million dollar CLS facility will generate employment in Saskatchewan and other provinces for decades to come. Outstanding research and commercialization programs will cast a different hue to the national economy and will help to build a world-class scientific community in Canada -- the frontier of synchrotron radiation research.
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