AMRI has been selected as the inaugural winner of the Pfizer Route Design Innovation Award, beating out 40 companies who were invited to share innovative ideas for process chemistry and large scale Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) production. Pfizer will present the company with the award at the AMRI 2010 Integrated Drug Discovery Symposium to be held in Albany NY, October 13-14. AMRI will also receive an honorarium for its win.

The innovation challenge was initiated by Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development in late 2009 to identify organizations to discover new and improved routes of synthesis for the manufacture of chemical intermediates and APIs. Companies with experience in process chemistry and large scale API production were invited to contribute approaches that improved the cost effectiveness of a specific compound of interest to Pfizer. Via this open innovation initiative, Pfizer harnessed the expertise of a select group of specialists who share Pfizer’s goal of developing partnerships to solve difficult and complex scientific challenges. After reviewing the expert proposals from companies who participated in the challenge, the Pfizer scientific review panel (from the API Technical Operations group in Pfizer Global Manufacturing) granted AMRI top honors in the contest.

“This award stands as testament to the technical expertise and entrepreneurial spirit of our scientific team, and our ability to generate intellectual property as a value-added service to our customers,” said AMRI Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas E. D’Ambra, Ph.D.

“Pfizer would like to congratulate AMRI on the high quality of their proposed solutions submitted in response to our inaugural award program. We look forward to further collaborating with AMRI to develop this and other programs and consider AMRI a valued partner in the development of innovative research,” said Richard Connell, Ph.D., Vice President and global head of External Research Solutions Center of Emphasis at Pfizer.