It is with profound grief that we say farewell to one of Aldrich Chemistry's long-term employees, Dr. Steven Branca. Steve passed away April 28, 2009 after a long struggle with liver cancer. Steve joined Aldrich Chemical Company in January 1981 as a Research Scientist after earning his Ph.D. in Chemistry under Professor Amos Smith at the University of Pennsylvania.

In rapid succession, Steve was promoted to Supervisor – Specialty Products, Manager – Research & Development, Director of New Products and ultimately to the position of Vice-President in May 1994. Subsequently, Steve provided leadership in Manufacturing and Business Development and most recently returned to a prior love of New Product Selection and Introduction.

Over his 28-year career Steve developed and mentored most of the current Manufacturing, Research & Development, and Marketing Management staff. He continuously displayed passion for his work, commitment to our organization and loyalty to everyone who dedicated themselves to its’ success.

Steve will be remembered as the premier theoretical / practical chemist of his time at Sigma-Aldrich. He was one of those special people that contributed greatly to the company’s success through shear force of will, hard work and love of chemistry.

We will miss his presence and friendship and honor his many contributions to Sigma-Aldrich.

A celebration of appreciation for our earth and an excellent opportunity for discussion of environmental issues and solutions. Earth Week runs from April 16th to Earth Day, April 22nd. Make a difference this week! Make a small change that will benefit the environment.

For a closer look at activities the American Chemical Society has planned for Earth Day visit http://tr.im/ACSEarthDay

To read how Sigma-Aldrich is contributing read  - Green Chemistry: Supporting the Advancement of Chemistry through Sound Environmental, Social and Fiscal Responsibilities .

At home turn down your water heater or only water your lawn in the early morning, install energy efficient light bulbs and please always recycle.

Written by: William Sommer, PhD. 

The Sigma-Aldrich toolbar and deskbar are now available to be downloaded on our website. Save time when looking for chemicals by entering the CAS, name, product number, MDL number or MSDS in the toolbar. You will be directed to the page results with the availability of the products. Go to the following to download the toolbar or the deskbar.

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/technical-service-home/search-tools.html

Sigma-Aldrich also offers a plethora of tools to accelerate your research. On the main page of our website, scroll down and click on "Web Toolbox" to get access to them.

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/

Written by John Chan, Ph.D

The penultimate session of the ACS Shortcourse in Organic Chemistry was taught by Prof. Jon Ellman of Univ. of California at Berkeley. The focus of this session was on High-Throughput Synthesis and Combinatorial Chemistry. The central goal of High-Throughput Synthesis and Combinatorial Chemistry is the accelerated identification of compounds with desired properties. The target compounds could be therapeutic agents (pharmaceutical industry), improved materials and catalysts (chemical and manufacturing industries), or formulation mixtures (biopharmaceutical industry). Combinatorial Chemistry was seen as the "silver bullet" by the pharmaceutical industry in the early 90s, with expectations of generating high number of hit compounds from its utilization in discovery research. However, those expectations were never met and Combinatorial Chemistry became just another fad in chemical research history. In early 2000, Combinatorial Chemistry did a makeover and reappeared as High-Throughput Synthesis. This time around, smaller and more-focused libraries were generated using parrallel synthesis. With the development of new supported reagents and scavengersand new technology platforms (e.g., Fluorous Technology, Microwave-Assisted Organic Synthesis), High-Throughput Synthesis has found a home in most discovery groups within the pharmaceutical industry. The key question now is which platform(s) will enable the use of High-Throughput Synthesis the most? What do you think?