From Molecular Design to Scalable Execution: The Combined Impact of AI and Flow Chemistry

SHANGHAI, April 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- As drug discovery places greater emphasis on practical execution and scalable delivery, flow chemistry is playing an increasingly important role across modern synthesis workflows. At the latest Viva Biotech's series webinar, "AI x Flow Chemistry: From Bench to Business — Academic and Industry Perspectives," Viva Biotech brought together speakers from academia and industry to discuss how flow chemistry is reshaping synthesis, automation, and scale-up. Inviting Dr. Jie Wu of the National University of Singapore and Dr. Kejia Ding of Viva Biotech focused on how flow chemistry is evolving from a specialized technology into a practical bridge between molecular design and scalable execution.

Towards On-Demand Synthesis of Organic Molecules

Professor Jie Wu explored how automated small-molecule synthesis may move beyond isolated reaction demonstrations toward scalable multistep execution. Flow chemistry already offers clear advantages in mixing, heat and photon transfer, safety, and scale-up. Yet wider use in automated synthesis still faces familiar constraints, including solids handling, reactions that require longer residence times, and limited compatibility across multistep workflows.

To address these challenges, Professor Wu highlighted high-speed circulation flow as an enabling platform that combines features of both batch and continuous processing. The approach offers strong mixing, tolerance for solids, and better compatibility with slower transformations. Demonstrated across photochemical, gas-handling, homogeneous, and heterogeneous reactions, it points to a broader and more flexible flow toolkit for multistep synthesis.

He also emphasized that in multistep chemistry, reaction success alone is not enough. Intermediates must move cleanly from one stage to the next, with purification built into the workflow. To make that possible, he outlined two complementary approaches: a universal flow platform for target-oriented synthesis, and solid-phase automated synthesis for diversity-oriented library construction. Within the latter, Chemical Recipe Files were introduced as a way to encode optimized multistep protocols in a reproducible, machine-executable format, supporting both substrate screening and automated synthesis.

The broader implication is especially relevant to AI-enabled drug discovery. AI is expanding what can be designed, but synthesis still determines what can actually be tested. Automated multistep workflows matter because they make digitally proposed molecules more experimentally actionable within the DMTA cycle.

From Specialty Tool to Integrated Capability

From an industry perspective, Dr. Kejia Ding presented flow chemistry not as a niche technique, but as a deployable capability across medicinal chemistry, process development, and manufacturing. Within Viva Biotech's broader chemistry platform, it supports scale-up, hazardous and gas-handling reactions, photochemistry, electrochemistry, and selected solid-phase applications.

Taken together, the case studies presented in the webinar showed how flow chemistry can create value at multiple points in the development chain.

In the photochemical synthesis of the cyclopenta[b]benzofuran scaffold, flow chemistry enabled a compact setup well suited to medicinal chemistry work. By adapting and re-optimizing a published method for its own compound series, Viva Biotech established a workflow capable of delivering more than 20 g/day of the fully formed scaffold.

In a difluoromethyl chemistry program, the company revisited the preparation of a difluoromethyl sulfonyl chloride-related reagent in response to sourcing and cost considerations. Because the route involved chlorodifluoromethane under heated conditions, flow processing provided a safer and more practical solution. Viva established a flow route to the key thioether intermediate, achieving 80 g/day of crude material before downstream conversion through more conventional chemistry.

At the manufacturing level, Langhua Pharma, a Viva Biotech subsidiary, presented a multi-step continuous-flow Curtius rearrangement carried out under demanding conditions, including sodium azide handling, gas evolution, elevated temperature, strong exothermicity, unstable intermediates, and a tight delivery timeline. Under those constraints, flow chemistry enabled a safer and more scalable development route, allowing the team to move rapidly from process development to pilot demonstration and ultimately deliver 1,000 kg within two months.

Dr. Ding also noted that even in areas with a high degree of automation, such as peptide synthesis, complex programs still require flexible integration of platforms, synthetic strategies, and expert intervention. That point reinforced a broader theme of the discussion: the future lies not in any single technology, but in how technologies are combined into workable, end-to-end systems.

Bridging AI-Driven Design and Experimental Execution

One of the clearest messages from the discussion was that AI delivers the most value when it is tightly connected to experimental systems that can make, test, refine, and scale molecules in the lab. In that sense, flow chemistry and automation are not standalone innovations, but part of a broader operating model for discovery.

Through its integrated platform approach, Viva Biotech is helping close the gap between molecular design and practical execution, linking discovery capabilities with synthesis, development, and manufacturing expertise to better support partners from early research through delivery.

Full Webinar Replay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUjVDHKjqIM&t=2915s

SOURCE Viva Biotech